@rcalmus
I couldn’t bring myself to sit with a a torch and anneal each piece. I’m shooting a fair bit with matches all summer and have quite a bit of brass to do. The torch machines that are out there caught my eye, but I didn’t like the idea of having to anneal in the garage. I also don’t have to fart around with tempilaq or timing. On top of that I’m loading for friends as well with the ammo crisis and it just seemed like the torch setups would be more wasted time adjusting. I’m sure they work, amp has a lot of reading on various types of annealing and it dosnt seem like rocket Science. Not everyone wants to spend 1400$ on an annealer and that’s okay. If you want the most consistent results it’s hard to argue there is anything better than the amp. I also just got the thing, 1 match in with it and some misc hunting brass.
Main reason also is I wanted an annealer now. I waited for an annie since April and finally said screw it. Amp was in stock, annealez was like 6 weeks out. My match rifle brass was on its 4th firing and my ES went crazy high, from 20s to 75. I could also feel seating differences on my arbor press. A fellow shooter let me use his amp, and my ES went back down where they should be. That and seeing the ease of use sold me.
On top of that I got sick of messing with dies and bushings all the time. Annealing in theory resets the brass so I don’t have to adjust my die due to work hardened brass. Seating pressure definitely feel better with annealed brass. Another plus is hopefully longer brass life. I don’t run the piss out of my volume brass, so if this gets me some more consistent life I’ll take it.
The amp is fricken fast. No messing with setup, you can be annealing within 10 minutes of opening the box. The mark II machines have Aztec mode which fries a piece of brass and gives you the code for that specific head stamp, and lot however far you want to take it.
As I said above, worth 1400$ I don’t know. But when I’m shooting a thousand plus rounds a year at .30 to 1.50 a pop and need consistency, I feel the amp will give me that. I don’t know much about science, but I put my brass in the hole and press start and it’s done….
And to answer your question, had I not purchased an amp, I would have sent my brass to someone local (read as in state as I live in nowhere) to anneal on an amp. Most were charging about what unknown is, but that’s just more messing around cause now I need to ship the stuff. The amp made sense to me.
9[emoji2
