so the other night i tumbled some brass in corncob and then sized and deprimed it all. i had about 30 pieces of nickel and about 50 pieces of brass .444. after sizing and depriming i didn't feel like going back outside and tumbling the lube off so i said what the hell and washed it in the sink. i think layed it all out on a towel to air dry. the next day i picked up a few cases and water still came out. so i said to myself lets put them on cookie sheet and into the oven. so that is what i did set the oven at 350 and popped them in for 30 min. all the cases were nice and dry. BUT now all the brass cases are a golden color like the way brass gets after it has some age on it. did i reduce the life of my brass? i think next time ill just go put them back in the tumbler for a few minutes to get the lube off.

I don't know if you harmed your brass by baking it, but personally, I would NEVER put brass in an oven.

To dry brass that I have washed or annealed (with the base half in a pan of water), I built a case drying board. It's a scrap of 2x6 about 16" long that I drove 4 rows of 8d finish nails into about 1" apart and leaving 1 1/2" of the nails sticking out of the board.

I simply place the cases upside down on the nails, then place the board on a window sill in direct sunlight for a few hours.

Just rinse your brass in 90% isopropyl alcohol.
It will dry quickly.

In my younger years I did that. Can't recall any problem I had with it. Load 1 to near max. and see what happens. roger

I'd think you'd be ok. Brass anneals above 400 degrees, so I don't think you've done anything to the case head. Softening the head is a very bad thing. As to the darker color, because it was hot, it oxidized faster than normal. Don't think that is a problem.

I have dried a good bit of brass in the oven...but I only heat the oven to 170* and time it for twenty minutes. I leave the brass in while the oven cools. I have never noted any problem with the brass even over years of use.

I use a small toaster oven to dry 50-100 rounds at a time for 15 minutes at 200 DEG. I do notice a slight discoloration which I think is oxidation.

quote:

Originally posted by Blackhawk44:
I have dried a good bit of brass in the oven...but I only heat the oven to 170* and time it for twenty minutes. I leave the brass in while the oven cools. I have never noted any problem with the brass even over years of use.

This works for me as well!

You're taking the oven's manufacturer's word that when the knob is at 350 it's really 350 degrees? I wouldn't. But I also wouldn't throw out the brass until I loaded some to see if the head was softened by that long soak in the oven.

Besides dehydrating fruit, vegetables and meat jerky, my 9 tray Excalibur food dehydrator also doubles as a cartridge case dryer as the max temp is 145 degrees.

I understand your issue!! Used to do that many years ago---set oven at 400 put in brass then turn off oven. Take out in the morning and they were dry but they were 223 and 308 dirty mil brass that took a lot to clean them.

What will work faster than you think is to put them on a cookie sheet laying flat then a fan blowing on them with the open end facing the fan.

The dehydrator sounds like a great idea but the oven is a no no for me.

I put quite a bit of brass through the oven, since it is always wet after annealing the case mouths of wildcats (and most Bertram brass). Before I retired, I spent 35 years as an engineer, and we had an entire metallurgy department to consult. Their opinion was that nothing under 400 would affect the metallurgy. Since water boils at 212, I shake the cases dry, spread them on a cookie sheet and pop in the oven at 250. I leave them till they are toasty, and throw them on another sheet to cool. Never had a problem. There's really no reason to go over 250. Takes a little longer but never close to a problem temperature.

i am blessed with a very understanding wife, but if i tried to do that I'm afraid that she'd bake my brass

An ACCURATE article concerning cartridge brass . I want to caution ANY of you who think setting the entire case into an Oven below 482 degrees is OK . IT'S NOT OK !. Under and Over annealing can cause sometimes Serious consequences in regards to case body and head . It's a difficult scenario to explain . One must know the case's history and actual composition ,as Work hardening occurs with multiple firing reloading sequences and NOT just the neck an shoulder either . Stretching causes case head separation and holding brass at temperatures for extended periods of rime can effect or hasten that condition . WHY chance it ; besides leaving unwanted residue from water evaporation on brass seems counter productive to cleaning doesn't it ?. Simply rinse brass off in a volatile solvent ,lacquer thinner Iso Alcohol ,acetone Etc. or blow dry it . If you must use an oven stay under 250 degrees why ? Who knows you may get busy and forget their in there and that Temp WON'T hurt no matter how long they stay in .

Optimal Case Temperatures for Successful Annealing
Brass is an excellent conductor of heat. A flame applied at any point on a case for a short time will cause the rest of the case to heat very quickly. There are several temperatures at which brass is affected. Also, the time the brass remains at a given temperature will have an effect. Brass which has been "work hardened" (sometimes referred to as "cold worked") is unaffected by temperatures (Fahrenheit) up to 482 degrees (F) regardless of the time it is left at this temperature. At about 495 degrees (F) some changes in grain structure begins to occur, although the brass remains about as hard as before--it would take a laboratory analysis to see the changes that take place at this temperature.

The trick is to heat the neck just to the point where the grain structure becomes sufficiently large enough to give the case a springy property, leaving the body changed but little, and the head of the case virtually unchanged.

If cases are heated to about 600 degrees (F) for one hour, they will be thoroughly annealed--head and body included. That is, they will be ruined. (For a temperature comparison, pure lead melts at 621.3 degrees F).

The critical time and temperature at which the grain structure reforms into something suitable for case necks is 662 degrees (F) for some 15 minutes. A higher temperature, say from 750 to 800 degrees, will do the same job in a few seconds. If brass is allowed to reach temperatures higher than this (regardless of the time), it will be made irretrievably and irrevocably too soft.

Brass will begin to glow a faint orange at about 950 degrees (F). Even if the heating is stopped at a couple of hundred degrees below this temperature, the damage has been done--it will be too soft. From this discussion we can see that there are four considerations concerning time and temperature:

1. Due to conduction, the amount of heat necessary to sufficiently anneal the case neck is great enough to ruin the rest of the case.

2. If the case necks are exposed to heat for a sufficient period of time, a lower temperature can be used.

3. The longer the case necks are exposed to heat, the greater the possibility that too much heat will be conducted into the body and head, thereby ruining the cases.

4. The higher the temperature, the less time the case necks will be exposed to heat, and there will be insufficient time for heat to be conducted into the body and head.

You can see that there are a couple of Catch-22s involved in this annealing business. On the one hand, the brass conducts heat quite rapidly, and a fairly high temperature with sufficient time must be attained to do the job. On the other hand, too much time cancels the effect, and we will be left with a case that is too soft and not suitable for anything but scrap. Obviously, there must be a solution; otherwise, not even the cartridge manufacturers could do it right.


Over-Annealing and Under-Annealing
When cartridge brass is under-annealed, virtually nothing has changed. If your case necks have become work-hardened, they will remain work-hardened, You will not see any improvement in case life or in accuracy. You will assume (incorrectly) that annealing is a waste of time. (In this case, with under-annealed brass, it is.)

Over-annealing is certainly the worst condition, and can even be dangerous, as pointed out above. Over-annealing has two aspects: over-annealing of the case neck only, and any annealing of the lower half of the case. There is no particular danger to over-annealing the case necks, which is the usual result of standing the brass in water and heating the necks with a torch. All that will happen is that your accuracy will not improve, or it may become worse, and the cases may seem to be a little more sticky during extraction. Case life will be improved because the necks are soft--too soft. However, you will conclude that annealing is not what it is cracked-up to be, and may even be a waste of time.

Any annealing whatsoever of the cartridge base is over-annealing and is dangerous. This area of the brass must retain the properties it had when it left the factory. If it is made the least bit softer, let alone "dead" soft, the stage is set for another shooter's nightmare. At the very least, you may get a whiff of hot gas directed toward your face. At the worst, you can be seriously injured as your gun behaves more like a hand grenade than a firearm .

I once heard a tale of a gentleman who placed his brass on a cookie tray and placed the whole batch in an oven at 650 degrees for over an hour. He wasn't hurt--at least seriously. His attitude toward annealing is very negative.


I know many will argue under 482 does nothing . However according too our Military and ASTM Standards it CAN , depending on Brass conditions !.

A lot of scary verbiage here*** Try one load near max.and see if your bolt is hard to open or you have a halo around your primer. roger

thanks for all the info/opinions guys. im thinking i will be fine on this one and plan not to go this route in the future.

a couple things i didn't include the first time. i actually set the oven at 300 and put them in i checked at about 20 min by dropping a few drops of water on the aluminum foil i had the pan wrapped in and it just kinda sat there and slowly evaporated. so i said what the hell and turned it to 350 and closed it for about 10 more minutes. opened the oven and dropped some more water drops on the foil and it fairly quickly evaporated. i figured at that point they had to be dry and removed them. another thing my oven seems to be set a little on the low side. seems you always need to add a little bit of heat to cook properly so i tend to believe that the heat is actually less than the knob settings.

as for the brass the .444 brass was all once fired hornady by myself or friends while i was there watching. the 270wsm brass is once fired from a friend and also some from myself all from factory loaded ammo. so the brass hasn't been hot rodded.

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:
A lot of scary verbiage here*** Try one load near max.and see if your bolt is hard to open or you have a halo around your primer. roger

the load that showed the best groups was 60g of rl22 and the max is 61g so my load is neer max in the book. it showed no signs of pressure so i will load a couple of the baked brass and see what happens.

quote:

Originally posted by TripletDad:
I'd think you'd be ok. Brass anneals above 400 degrees, so I don't think you've done anything to the case head. Softening the head is a very bad thing. As to the darker color, because it was hot, it oxidized faster than normal. Don't think that is a problem.

I doubt it is damaged, most temps for annealing are closer to 600 than 350. If you want to dry them anything over 215deg is just wasting energy. Water goes to steam @ what, 212deg?

quote:

fredj338

Temperature and Time held are determining factors . I wouldn't be concerned about annealing at those low temps , What concerns me is
Household ovens aren't exactly ACCURATE as far as Temps go . I also would worry about case body as cases are basically 3 different sections regarding annealing properties .

Crude explanation ; Head hard ,Body somewhat softer,shoulder and neck softer yet . Case work hardening from firing and Powder charges creeps down a case through out it's useful life cycle . Neck is first to turn brittle Cracks then Shoulder an so on .

sksshooter should be fine as it's Highly unlikely at those Temps, especially with Once fired case would become problematic.

I see no real reason for Oven baking brass cases and know there are far better ways of drying them faster without chancing a mishap .

As Always NOTHING is written in Stone . The Dept. of the Army along with ASTM ,SAMMI an others saw fit to experiment . They also issued bulletins with " Concerns " as to metallurgical compositions of brass . As everyone's isn't exactly the same blend .

Carry On ;

Getting yer brass to hot has lots of adverse effects on yer brass. Ya'll wanna keep yer brass toasty warm 'cause bad things happen when ya'll get yer brass in a highly heated state. Mostly this happens to make yer bolt or lever hard to handle and yer brass too hot to handle, which can be frustrating when ya'll gets yer brass in an agitated state which gits everything in the immediate surrounding in an overheated state.

I just baked some Norma Brass at 500 for 3 hours and made a fabulous Garlic Onion Dip for it!!! They were nice and crunchy!!!!!