I can not understand what process to follow, I have deprimed, sized, and cleaned cases which I have annealed.  Is it necessary to clean the cases again?  I have read that the inside of the neck gets rough and cause problems.  Also, have read it does not cause any issues.  What is the real answer.

My recommendation: anneal first. I am not sure what the correct answer is or if there is one. I annealed 100 .223 cases tonight and I tumbled them for 15 minutes just to try to knock some of the Tempilaq residue off. I did this only because I had prepped those cases before I sped up my annealing process. I guess the only real reason to clean after annealing would be to remove any burnt residue in the case. Annealing before you deprime, etc... should solve your issue. Either way I don't see why you couldn't just use a small nylon brush like an RCBS neck brush to round out any unwanted material in the neck. Also, the temperature that carbon burns about 5,500 F degrees higher then your annealing temp, so you shouldn't have any burnt carbon in there



 

Back a few years ago you could buy cheepie ammo that was annealed, loaded, and sold.
Now it is all about marketing and looks.

To my other reloading friends that have been doing this for many decades; it is just discolored a bit; not big deal.

FWIW... anneal first.... when I formed 7TCU brass in the late 70's , stood cases up in a pan of water to the depth of the shoulder, heated with a torch, and when got red, just tipped them over to cool... ...

Understand;  I have been handloading and custom case forming for nearly 40 years.

Why in the world are you annealing once-fired brass?  Or are the cases NOT once-fired?

Especially for the .223 AR. I have cases that have been fired way over 10x's in AR's and never have needed annealing.

OP:  Remember; home annealing often leaves cases with variable neck tension.  This settles out in the cold-working of a few a but it is easy to get significant variations in neck tension.  In addition, annealing for most shooters is needed rarely.  Typically, I do not anneal AT ALL before primer pockets loosen and the case gets scrapped.  Recommendation;  Do not anneal unless your cases begin to crack at the neck.  This may happen in a rifle with a sloppy chamber earlier than it aught, but with most rifles today you can reload cases many times before annealing is necessary.

IMO it is not needed.

Vince

i have yet to anneal a case.

got to much brass.

clown

I spent almost a whole year reading and doing everything I could to learn about annealling.
I got a buddy who is the lead ballistician for Sierra and he has helped me out alot too.
In the end, I am not trying to shoot the same hole at 1000 yards and I dont think I will ever get around to reloading any of my brass more than 15-20 times; I opted to not even get into annealing.

I haven't annealed any .223 or .308 cases.  I have annealed .300AAC cases, after sizing, trimming, chamfering, and deburring. .  I tumbled them after to clean them, but wiped the outside surfaces in mass towel down with mineral spirits. If you wet tumble cases with Dillon lube without this step, the lube will make a mess and will not come off the case.

I will say that if you don't clean the lube from the inside of the case neck, for any extruded powder such as Varget in the .223, the powder can log-jam in the neck causing a mess on your reloader.  I haven't done a significant volume on .223 or .308, so I simply do a rough towel down with mineral spirits to remove case lube from the outside and then I use a q-tip to clean the inside of the case neck with either mineral spirits or denatured alcohol.  If I was doing a large volume of cases, I would wipe them down and then wet tumble them again before loading.

The word is that if you don't anneal .300AAC and other self-formed cases, accuracy will suck.

My Process on RIFLE cases, when I anneal... works great for me, YMMV

Decap (Lee Universal)
Wet media clean (stainless pins-water-dawn-lemishine)
Anneal
Lube/Size
Trim/chamfer/debur/swage if needed (edit for swage)
Dry media clean to remove lube and any brass shavings from trim/chamfer/debur (with a very small touch of polish to deter tarnish - personal pref)
Prime/load/shoot/return to top

IMO...if you questions is, do you need to clean the anneal mark off, the answer is no.  
IMO...if your question is should you anneal before or after you size, my answer is I anneal before I size, and I recommend doing it prior.
IMO... If you question is should you resize the cases you sized and then annealed...my answer is yes if it were me,  because if I had a lot of them, I could probably lube/size/clean them again faster than I could individually make all the measurements I would want to make to make sure the brass didn't get tweeked during annealing...ymmv

There is more than one reason to anneal.   One can be extended case life - and peoples mileage varies.   One can be to make neck tension more consistent (again mileage varies) if dealing with a bucket of brass from unknown origins for example....but to get consistent neck tension...you need to anneal consistently......Pandora's box...not worth arguing over.....because one again, peoples mileage will vary.    Do what works for you and produces ammo suitable for you for your purposes.   I do feel confident in saying though, it is easy to anneal brass if the only goal is to anneal it/extend case life.    It is tougher to anneal brass consistently = consistent neck tension.......this is why some people actually see worse accuracy after annealing then before.  2 two cents

Annealing is an advanced reloading technique that is rarely used outside of benchrest or long range competition. I would never use it for standard caliber ammo meant to be run through a semi-auto. It has it's place in reformed cases such as .300 Blackout, 6mmBRX or anything else that's being reformed from a parent cartridge case.

The idea that I'm going to run more than 5 or 6 reloads through any semi-auto is foreign to me. The brass (Lake City) is too cheap and available for me to put this much time and effort into the process. This is especially true when loading in volume.

Spend more time at the range shooting, that time is more valuable to me than any perceived benefit I'll derive from annealing.

Thanks for all the answers/advice.  I did not look in the Armory sector, so that is why I had this in the wrong location.  

After reading, I have no idea why I decided to anneal, I am not that good of a shot, and at my age 100 yards even with a scope (well can not be iron sights after I turned 70) the groups are not cloverleaf.  

Ciao

False.
Carbon (in air) burns at 930 Fahrenheit. In a non- oxidizing environment carbon will sublime (not burn) around 5800 Fahrenheit.

This is EXACTLY what I thought when I got into AR's, having handloaded for M1's and the Becursed Heinous Pure SheDevil Remington 742/740/7400 series abortions as well..

I decided to just give it a whirl and just reload till I got case failures {cracked necks, incipient had separation indications, enlarged primer pockets}.  WOW I am glad I did.  The AR is the sweetest case-lover there ever was.  Very easy on cases.  Now I simply wait for primer pockets to stretch and then scrap the cases as they come.  Another auto I got good case life out of was the Remington Model 8, the recoil-operated forerunner of the AK.  That one gave me excellent case life as well and is one of the few rifles I wish I hadn't sold.

Obviously an AR might have a bad chamber, etc, so don't just willynilly load to destruction but in my 2 rifles {2 5.56 and one 7.62}, they are gentle as can be.