something i read here the other day bothered me

[foxhunter]

someone, not sure who, posted that they were saving cases by re swaging the case head. not being a metallurgist that sounds down right dangerous to me. not necessarily the first time it would be done but in the future.

for the life of me i can't understand why anyone would want to operate at those type of pressures (pressures that expand primer pockets) on a intentional basis.

someone let me know if i am way off base with this thread.

[Lumpenproles]

Wasn't it in a thread about the 17CCM and 22CCM? I think I remember reading about that as well, and the reason the primer pockets were getting loose wasn't due to pressure, but rather an improperly manufactured case that left the head too soft and not work hardened enough. I'd imagine after a couple of times of expanding, and swaging back to size you would have a case with enough strength in the head to withstand "normal" pressure ranges without getting loose.

Travis

[montdoug]

I'm with Bob, if it was done due to the brass being too soft to hold a primer pocket it sounds like a good way to get an eye patch while trying to work harden the brass. Buy new brass would be my take but I didn't read the original post so I have no opinion really.

[MarinePMI]

I'm not a metallugist(sp?) either, but wouldn't someone just have to heat the case up and let it cool naturally to make it hard? I thought (for brass) quenching was what caused the brass to stop crystalizing as it cooled down? Right? That being said, if this is the case, why not harden the complete case this way, and then go back and anneal the mouth? Interesting topic...

[Lumpenproles]

I'm not a metallugist(sp?) either, but wouldn't someone just have to heat the case up and let it cool naturally to make it hard? I thought (for brass) quenching was what caused the brass to stop crystalizing as it cooled down? Right? That being said, if this is the case, why not harden the complete case this way, and then go back and anneal the mouth? Interesting topic...

Nope, that would work for air hardening steel. Brass can only be made softer by heating. The only way to make brass hard again is through work hardening. Annealing is heating of the material and then rapidly cooling, and the end result is softening, at least in respect to brass.

[sicero]

The primary reason for quenching brass when annealing is to stop the heat from traveling any farther towards the case head. Kenny

[GLWenzl]

someone, not sure who, posted that they were saving cases by re swaging the case head. not being a metallurgist that sounds down right dangerous to me. not necessarily the first time it would be done but in the future.

for the life of me i can't understand why anyone would want to operate at those type of pressures (pressures that expand primer pockets) on a intentional basis.

someone let me know if i am way off base with this thread.

I do not understand? How would swaging a case head save a case or prolong it its life??? I have been working many hours at work and try to catch up once a day but I must have missed this post and a search only turned up bullet swaging and this thread??? Nothing on 17 CCM search???

[UpNearTheBorder]

Was it for saving a case or trying to turn it into a smaller cal for maybe an obsolete round or wildcat? Seems like the old wildcaters did something along those lines at times. Maybe spent .22 cases swaged up for 6mm jackets? Just a shot in the dark. Paul.

[Daryl]

I do not understand? How would swaging a case head save a case or prolong it its life??? I have been working many hours at work and try to catch up once a day but I must have missed this post and a search only turned up bullet swaging and this thread??? Nothing on 17 CCM search???

: Gary - cold working the brass hardens it to a degree, each time it is worked. They/he/she is trying to save expanded primer pockets on supposedly soft brass by swaging the bases back to hold new primers again.
: Like Bob, I think this is a very dangerous practise.

[foxhunter]

it had to do with the original fire and pitch ccm brass and trying to use it more than once. it's great if it works but just struck me as being a lil dangerous.
i know swaging is a common practice with bullets and some brass (schreoder for example) but never heard of anyone doing it to pressure expanded case heads, otherwise it seems everybody would be doing it to save their expensive lapua brass.

come on dan, alex, bryce or dr bubba jump in here and set us straight, please.

now that i think of it bryce seems to be missing in action...............

[georgeld]

Bob:

Good question for a starter.
I get a swelled primer pocket the brass is crushed and tossed in the scrap bucket.

Lumin: sp? You've got that completely wrong on the steel as you posted pard.

You SOFTEN steel by heating, then let it cool by itself in the air.
To harden steels heat it and quench it. The brighter the color, the hotter it is etc.
A quick quench for a short time will case harden it IF it's not held in til cold. That way leave's it still soft/hot in the center. Just quench it til the skin has darkened and pull it out will usually harden the outside surface.

Get it a decent red, then let it cool a little bit to even the color out. Then quench it til plumb cold will harden it. IF it's bright red to orange then quenched til cold, and is high carbon like tool steels. Then it'll be brittle and chip probably.

This quenching brass is a whole different deal to me and I've not gotten it figured out for sure yet so won't post what I think at this point as I don't want to say the wrong thing. But, take what I just posted about steel to the bank, ok?

[DittoHead]

someone, not sure who, posted that they were saving cases by re swaging the case head.

Wasn't it in a thread about the 17CCM and 22CCM?

...I must have missed this post and a search only turned up bullet swaging and this thread??? Nothing on 17 CCM search???

I think the post in question about CCM brass was created during the last week of the old forum. I remember reading something about that subject while I was trying (unsuccessfully) to absorb everything before the old stuff went away.

[GLWenzl]

Ok so if it has to do with swaging the case head for loose primer pockets I can see that as a poor way of doing business, and looks to me like it would be a pain in the butt to do as well.... I have never heard of this before and even if it was safe I think it is a waste of time especially on a rim case… But I don’t know much nor understand it all yet, still just a babe in the small caliber business…

As far as swaging CCM brass like Schroeder does I am under the impression for my conversation with him a few years back that he swages the top portion of the hornet brass to center the flash hole in the poorly made hornet brass then turns down the case head which is why his cases look funny as shown here on a 5mm Mag on the right.

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f388/glwenzl/DSCF0021.jpg

Not sure if that is 100% accurate but whatever he does has been working very well with many top end loads fired from his cases out of my 17 CCM as well as some that I used to make 17 Short Mag cases with...

[Lumpenproles]

Lumin: sp? You've got that completely wrong on the steel as you posted pard.

You SOFTEN steel by heating, then let it cool by itself in the air.
To harden steels heat it and quench it.

You explained what it takes to harden a water or oil hardening steel. I stand by my original comments in response to MarinePMI, which I had stated as the method to harden "air hardening steel."

"Air-Hardening Steel
A steel containing sufficient carbon and other alloying elements to harden fully during cooling in air or other gaseous mediums from a temperature above its transformation range. Such steels attain their martensitic structure without going through the quenching process."

Basically you need to heat the steel to a point above it critical temperature, which for A2 is ~1750*F. Then you let it cool naturally and you have a steel that is much harder than before it was heated. If you take the same piece of steel, heat it to the same critical temperature, only this time you bring it back to room temperature at a much more gradual pace(over 24 hours of constant temp drop) you will end up with a soft piece of steel again. The second process described is how to anneal air hardening steel.

The process of heating above the critical temp and quenching in either oil or water is how you harden steels of the oil hardening variety such as O1, or water hardening, such as W1.

In summary- Air hardening steels are made harder by heating and letting cool to room temp naturally. Oil and Water hardening steels are made softer by heating and letting cool naturally. Air hardening steels are made softer by heating, and being cooled gradually(much slower than they would naturally.) Oil and Water hardening steels are made harder by heating, then quenching in oil or water, depending on steel selection.

Travis

[Daryl]

Travis is correct. Air hardening steels (files are like that) are very high in carbon content and to anneal, must be covered in ashes or asbestos (find any?) to slow the cooling procedure as air cools them too quickly.
; I thought we were talking about swaging CCM brass to recover blown primer pockets? (lookee- me, trying to keep on topic?) :D

[Alex]

... I thought very seriously during my first days of fiddling with the 17M4. For various reasons, I was openning up primer pockets on a regular basis. One of those reasons was that the particular batch of brass was soft all over. There was (is?) a "primer swaging" gadget available that I considered buying, but for some reason did not. I won't address the question of whether it's a good idea. Wouldnt' seem to be a problem if the brass isn't stretched through the web, but how would you measure that? Sorta like the problem of what to do if you're not sure the shot you're about to take is safe. If in doubt, DON'T!

Right now I have the opposite problem. I have a lot of brass (a whole bunch of it, as a matter of fact) that is so hard that after the first firing, the necks are so hard that they will cause the 17 (17M4) or 20 (20VT) thin jacketted bullets to dimple from the pressure of seating them, resulting in varying depth seating and sorry accuracy.

Looks like I'm going to be annealing brass whether I want to or not.

Alex

[tim simbari]

As long as it's been mentioned, the CCM brass that was referenced as loose pockets in all probability the 1st generation Fiochhi which also was supposed to be 1 and out as well as not safely able to handle current loads. It was always suggested 85%-90% load density. Several years later it's easy to confuse the brass lots. The latter Fiocchi seems OK I've loaded some several times. One item worth a mention, I use pistol primers with AA1680 for the .17CCM. There is a very slight dimensional difference you can feel when seating. These pockets were not particularly tight to begin with, the Winchester primers have worked pretty good for me in that brass with no detectable loosening pushing 20gr Bergers @3200fps. The best default position is probably to get the Schroeder which appears to be turned down not swaged in any way. In the end this is such a great little efficient round it's all worth it IMHO.

[MarinePMI]

Wow! My head hurts. :D

Seriously though, this is some really good information...

So, because brass doesn't have as high a carbon content it hardens differently than steel, correct?

I seem to remember this has something to do with how carbon crystalizes as it cools or something like that...(can't remember all of it, except that it was out of the "$50 Knife Shop" book).

[TinMan]

Guys, for all practical purposes you can only harden cartridge brass by some sort of cold working (deformation) process, be that swaging, rolling, drawing, hammering, etc. Any application of heat will soften it. Quenching it after heating only stops the annealing process, and does not cause any hardening of the brass. Cartridge brass does not harden via heat treatment like an alloy steel.

Steels are very complicated, so it's no surprise there is lots of confusion. You really have to be careful to talk about specific alloys or classes of alloys. A quenched and tempered steel can be hardened by raising the metal above its transformation temperature to form what is known as austenite, followed by cooling it. This causes a phase transformation (crystal structure change) to martensite (hard stuff but brittle). How fast it must be cooled depends on the alloy chemistry - carbon content and the other alloying elements present, Cr, Mo, Ni, etc., and the size of the piece of steel. Typically, you need to cool to below 500°F or 600°F within 2 or 3 seconds to fully harden a low alloy steel like a Cr-Mo barrel steel, hence the need to oil or water quench. The quenched steel will be very hard, more than 65 HRC, and brittle. To regain useful properties like toughness and ductility, you then need to temper the quenched steel, by heating it to some intermediate temperature, say 400°F to 800°F, for 1/2 to several hours, depending on the specific alloy. The tempering operation changes the martensite, by forming some iron carbides, alloy carbides and by transforming the crystal structure of the martensite to yet another iron crystal structure called ferrite. I hope this helps rather than confuses.

[Eagle_view]

When cases are machined then they are not hardened around the primer pocket or rims like a drawn case, thus the cases flow away from the pressure easier than with a drawn case and loosen the primer pockets quicker. Swaging the head might work but punching the primer pocket to begin with would be better. Hope this helps. Some drawn cases from some manufacturers have the rims and primer pockets machined also and will have softer primer pockets than those which are stamped.

Lowell

[georgeld]

Somewhere I missed the referrence to A1 steels in the first postings. There are many hundreds of alloys and every one of them is different.
I've only had a limited amount of experience in heat treating anything. In the mid 60s as a machinist the company had a heat treatment department. I went in there looking around several times and about all I learned was each vat was of some different chemical at different temps. Many of the steels we made parts from were from 4140, 4130 and many other steels of course but, these are generally what blue steel rifle barrels are made of. Which leave's me fairly well confused as to why they are so soft on guns when this same steel once H/T correctly is used to make tools out of also. What I'd like to know is, do these various barrel makers 'temper' their barrels to make them 'tough', or are they left in raw form. IF such is done to them, what happens to the H/T when the gunsmith heats them for whatever length of time they do it for in blueing?

I had a barrel blank Chryro treated before turning. My gunsmith said that was the easiest turning blank he'd ever made a barrel from. He'd had lot's of them sent in for freezing after turning, but, this was the first before. He told me: "from now on they'll go in before turning instead of after" if the customer wants it done of course.

My personal experience's of 'tempering' steels is for my own use in my own shop, or on the job etc. Just take a torch and heat it, then dunk it in whatever's handy whether it's oil, beer, horse pee or water, and yes, I've used them all, plain water more time's of course. hehe!

I am wondering how and what's the best way to get proper benefit out of a dozen sticks of O1 rod I just bought. When I called for instruction papers was told they didn't have any. To properly 'heat treat' oil hardening it has to be heated to 350-800 degree's for one hour. There's no way in H I can do that around here. Expect I'll do like other steels and just heat with a torch and quench it and see how it turns out. IF it's about hard enough, that's fine, if not, I'll just do it again til it is. That's all I know how to do.
I've made hundreds of chisels, punches, knife blades and other tools over the last 45 yrs. Most have worked swell, some better than others, and some have been brittle and broken too. I've found the brightness of the color and coldness of the water/oil has a lot to do with the results.

I've never to my knowledge used A1, air hardening steels. I'd like to experiment with it sometime.

I haven't looked it up, but, believe the true meaning of: Quench would mean rapid cooling from a hot state in colder liquid. It don't matter and not worth getting into the details of chemicals and metalurgy side tracking this thread like we have, and as I posted near the first part of the OT, I apologize for it. Let's get back on the track of the original questions.

This brass annealing game has me scratching my head. I've had case mouths crack of course, but, also in '73 I bought 100 Rem .222mags and proceeded to load and shoot them some over 60, yes SIXTY times and only had one crack, two crushed in the press and one or two lost.

These were full length resized every time they were loaded, never trimmed, not even once, and until the last were not cleaned either. Yes, some looked plumb nasty. IF brass is so sensitive, how did I get by with it for so long and so much use in this case?? Blind luck and not knowing any better??

Wish you well, far as swaging brass to tighten primer pockets, not me. I can create enough problems without doing that one.

[TinMan]

George, like any metal, for brass to crack, it needs to be work hardened and deformed beyond its fracture strain. My guess is that the chamber in your 222Mag had a very tight neck, which means it did not get deformed very much with each firing, and you had your dies set up correctly. I have a Kimber 82 in Hornet that I am on the 12th reload for some of my brass. My Ruger No.3 in Hornet get 4 or 6 reloads before starting to crack brass. The Ruger has a bigger neck diameter.

For the O-1 steel, you can get up to 450°F or so in the oven of your kitchen stove, if the pieces will fit in there, and if the lady of the house doesn't catch you.

[georgeld]

TinMan:
Got that female problem handled. Am batching for now. Do what ever the h I desire in here now! Looks like I have been too from the piles of things around the place. Hasn't been a complaint in three yrs now. Except when I can't seem to find where I put something last.

Most of the parts I'd make would be so small it'd be stupid to run the electric oven long and high enough for that little bitty piece of steel.

Couple weeks ago when ordering a bunch of tools and things I got ten 3' sticks of O1: 1/2, 3/8, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16th's. Smaller they are the cheaper it gets. but, sure does get expensive fast with the bigger sizes that's why I didn't get 5/8, 3/4 and 1". That would be another hundred bucks just laying in the drawer. Do intend to get them eventually.

I did get a hunk of all thred 7.8x14 for dies though. made two so far, cut a few other pcs off and faced them, but, haven't got back to it yet. Now that I've got this rod, intend to make a chamber reamer or three. Need a clean out reamer first.

You had any exp. with just heating and quenching this O1? I'll learn quick, but, might help if your reply gets here first.

Heck of it is on those dies, they were a set of old Herters I think. Would have to dig to find them since I don't have need to get them out any longer. No, I won't part with them.

Thanks for the discussion,

[Eagle_view]

Steel Alloys are engineered to be heat treated in a specified manner including the quenching medium. The tool steels that are most generally encountered ar W2 and O1 but there are many others.

Here is a very good reference web site that provides a lot of info in a pretty straight forward manner for knifemakers.

http://www.knives.com/heatreat.html

Lowell

[TinMan]

it looks like a pretty darn good practical reference to me. I've seen torch heating on small drill rod done, but it was a long time ago, and the part was not that critical. You don't just heat the rod as-is, you have to heat it up so it is pretty bright yellow (>1400°F or so), oil quench, then temper it at the appropriate temperature. The right temperatures for pre-quench and opost quench heating are in the link from Eagle View. The colors for tempering ('drawing') are the color of a clean steel surface as it oxidizes as you play the torch back over the part, not a 'glowing in the tip of the torch flame' color. Torch heat treating of small parts can be done, but is hard to control for consistency and quality.

[foxhunter]

is there no one that can answer the original question,or did i just miss it? i thought for sure the guys over on benchrest central would have the answer, but no answer.

it sounds like a good theory, question is, what would the swaging tool look like? would it be a collet ,crimp or a roller.

if i understand the theory behind swaging expanded primer pockets, each time you work the brass the head would become harder from the working process and stronger. wouldn't the brass eventually become brittle from the work hardening and give way just like a neck.

at one time there was a company that made steel case heads that were threaded to the brass front section of a case. the claim was they would withstand 100,000 psi, just imagine your throat after a box or two of those loads.

[TinMan]

Msot commercial swaging machines I have seen have been rotary hammer forges. They have 3 or 4 anvils shaped to the doiameteer of the piece being worked, and just beat on the past as it is rotated and moved in and out of the jaws. Hammer forged barrels are made on machines like this. Tubes of barrel steel are slid over a male mandrel that has the rifling and bore size features on it, then the steel tube is beaten down onto the mandrel.

For primer pockets, I think a collet or crimp type machine woud work best. if a loading press didn't have enough power, youmight have to resort to hydraulic press or an arbor press of some sort. You will need some male mandrel to fit into the primer pocket to form back to the right diameter. Maybe something like the swage-type military crimp remover tools from RCBS or Dillon. Hope this helps.

[TinMan]

I thought I had checked it, but I guess not.

[TinMan]

George, I found another good link for you.

http://threeplanes.net/toolsteel.html