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Found a video on salt bath annealing. The salt is a eutectic mixture of 45% Potasium Nitate (KNO3), 45% Sodium Nitrite (NaNO2), and 10% Sodium Nitrate (NaNO3).
[youtube][/youtube]
Spectracide stump remover is one source for KNO3, I've also discovered a mail order bio diesel supply house that stocks all three chemicals...
You should already have a melting pot, of course you may want to find a used one to dedicate to this process.
I plan on making my own brackets. There's a long discussion and some plans over on the 65 Creedmore site. I've also made up my own set of drawings.
The temperature probe and digital thermometer can be ordered from the usual places. I plan on using one of my boolit casting thermometers for now...
Re: Salt Bath Annealing
Posted: 12 Apr 2017 10:07
by buckeye43210
Found another salt bath annealing thread over on the AR15 fourms.
After years of reloading, I just started annealing after getting into long range shooting with my Ruger Precision Rifle 6.5 Creedmoor.
I tried the 'case in the deepwell socket and torch' method, but I just couldn't get repeatable results and I ended up over-temping and ruining just as many cases as I successfully annealed so I abandoned that technique. I couldn't afford one of those fancy annealing machines so I went another direction that was inexpensive, works perfectly, it's easy, and absolutely repeatable for me.
Following in the footsteps of fellow arfcomer (BattleRife), I built a salt bath annealing station following pictures of his from years ago. I now anneal my cases after every firing. When I come home from the range I use a universal decapper to de-prime the cases, then I anneal each case in a 500°C salt bath for 5 seconds.
After that the cases go into my ultra-sonic cleaner, then resized, trimmed de-burred and chamfered, and then they are ready to reload.
