I recently went to the range with my BSA P14 & shot some handloads using berdan primed ex mil cases. Most of these were range pick ups that had previously been fired in Lee Enfield rifles of one or another model with their oversized chambers. I had previously neck annealed these after resizing so was diaappointed to loose a large no. of them to neck splits. I'm now wondering if I should neck anneal before as well as after resizing, there being so much squishing of brass going on? The P14 has a pretty neat chamber by & large.
Steve

Hi mate

My first response would be to ask why you'd bother with these cases. For starters they are of unknown provenance, they are Berdan primed, and now they aren't even standing up to use. Good modern Boxer-primed .303 brass is fairly cheap, and you'd get a fair number of re-uses out of each case in your P14 (more than I get with my Lee Enfields).

Leaving that aside though, if you are getting neck splits after one shot I'd have to wonder whether you are annealing them sufficiently. The other option of course is that they were already split before you fired them, but this would ordinarily be fairly apparent in the loaded round.

BTW doing whatever you do twice isn't the answer, you've just got to do it once, and do it properly. The result should be sufficient for several re-uses of each case, especially if your rifle is not loose in the chamber. You would normally do it before resizing though, rather than after, because if they are brittle the sizing may well split them.

Do you use a gas flame or molten lead, and if the former how do you judge temperature? It seems to me that you may not be getting the neck and shoulder quite hot enough to actually anneal, but by the same token you want to be careful not to heat the base and bottom half of the case which needs to remain hard.

The conventional if crude method is to polish the necks with fine steel wool and stand them in water deep enogh to reach about halfway up. You then heat thm with a good intense gas flame, keeping it moving around the neck until the neck reaches uniform a blue colour and the brown edge of the heated zone reaches below the shoulder, then tip over into the water to stop the process.

You don't want to overdo it either, as heating the neck to red hot will degrade its properties by excessive grain growth.

Dunking the case necks in molten lead is another method of annealing them, but IMHO it has a few risks attached to it, so I don't do it that way.

Once again though, it would be a great deal simpler just to turf the lot and get some new boxer-primed stuff.

When you pick up range brass you never know what you're going to get.

Thanks Dan, in answer to your first query, why, 'cause I can, I guess I'm just naturally perverse. Most of it is CAC of mid 50s manufacture & not too mixed, it appears to be in reasonable nick rather than stuff thats been lying around for ages, some has been discarded by guys I've been shooting with.
As to your second, thanks very much for the full explanation. I tend to heat them in a gas flame holding them by the base & when they get too hot to hold drop them in a container of water. It may be the heat is marginal for the amount of resizing required, it seems to work OK for other calibres I load for though & the case appearance is as you describe. I may try some standing in the pan & see if that works better, 'cause I can. I've got heaps of the things & most of a thousand Berdan primers to use up.
Steve.

Sometimes old brass cased ammo splits the neck more or less on fireing, especially if the chamber neck is large. But since you have the primers & decap ability and chums where you get good brass of this nature, Do it!. I tumble known quality range pick ups to get rid of crud for a close inspection while using a Lee universal (boxer) decap die. I have a little 1/2 inch square stick about 10 inches long that I've driven a headless nail into so a decapped case fits rim down but enough nail sticks out to keep the case from falling off. You can do something similar for berdan. A shallow hole in the end of the stick perhaps. My home bottle torch puts out a flame with a blue inner pinpoint of flame. THe case is quickly turned by thumb and forefinger as it sits i\on the nail in a dimly lit garage till the neck discolors dull red fron the pinpoint and is then tipped off into a small bucket of water. After the cases all dry, they are then lubed and sized as required. When I feel the neck tension beginning to vary on bullet seating after loading and shooting, it's time to anneal as the necks have work hardened again. But Honestly , 303 Brit military chambers let me toss trass after 3 reloads regardless of maybe an extra loading. I HATE using a broken shell extractor.