Annealing is best left to the brass manufacturers , as it needs specialized equipment to do it correctly. A misfire can be caused by improper annealing. When the shoulder becomes to soft, the firing pin strike can set back the shoulder. If the round fires, the brass expands, leaving no evidence of set back. I was shooting 223 Federal brass on its 6th loading. Having cracked necks, i decided that annealing might get a few more firings out of the brass. Even tho 40 years ago, annealing did not work on some 243win brass, making the necks to soft. The 223 misfire would not fire on the 2nd strike from the firing pin. At home, measurements show the shoulder was set back .014"  when measureing to the datum line. L.E. Wilson's case gage shows the brass head  below the lowest step. All loaded rounds had been gaged before firing. More testing was needed. Took 3 annealed brass with  used primers and  chambered them. After 2 strikes with the firing pin, shoulder set back  was  between .010" & .012" The used primer already had the firing pin dent in them, so the blow from the pin was not as great as new primers. The primer involved in the misfire was placed in a different non-annealed piece of brass. It did fire on the 2nd firing pin strike. A total of 4 hits on the primer, till it fired. I feel the primer may have been damaged from the first 2 misfires.  Savage Axis  bolt action 223 less than a year old. 722 rounds fired. Loaded with IMR4198-20.5gr-CCI400-Win. 55gr FMJBT-Federal brass-RCBS Dies made in 2010. There are Hornady Annealing Kits available & Tempilstik &  Tempilaq that may help. But when you overheat the brass, there is no way to fix it.    3/28/12

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http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_6_56/ai_n56225198/   Good Luck.   My results have not been good using a  torch. My thoughts on the subject. >     Photos

Score Shooter of the Year Joe Entrekin has 40+ reloads on his regularly-annealed brass. The smallest 1000-yard 5-shot group ever shot in IBS competition was done with brass annealed after every firing.

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OK, I did the shoulder set back test(cases with fired primer) on three of my RP cases that I annealed. Set back was .006 So, I loaded up three of my once fired/resized LC cases with factory only annealing and the results were the same at .006 Tested on my INNOVATIVE TECH gauge. Now perhaps tommorrow I will test this first lot at the range.

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historical note..back in the early days of my IHMSA silhouette shooting (1979-80) we prepped .223 brass to be made into 7TCU by just standing them neck deep in water, and tipping them over when the color changed....