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Awesome, Matt. I wish I was so lucky. Also keen to hear how they perform for you.
Murray

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Never would have thought of soldering the necks, even for light cast loads?
I suppose if you anneal the cracked case first & resize etc next it could be done then with the base in water - would be a tricky job still.
Would only use it for a dummy round myself, but in a pinch it'll more than work!
Clever!

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I use a length of 'dirty' (unpolished) steel rod clamped horizontally in a bench vise so the case is slipped over the rod and soldering (low temperature silfos) of the split is done on the 'flat'. The steel mandrel stops flow of silfos through to the inside of the neck and even if a small amount does flow through it won't stick to the unpolished rod. Aim the gas flame away from the case and the silfos runs just above normal annealing temperature with the mandrel acting as a heat sink too.
Slip the case back off into a container of water.

I solder and clean up first then anneal and size the case. So far I have got quite a few more cast loadings out of these cases without any further splitting. In so far as full steam loads the case bodies do not get any hotter than they would when annealing so the soldering process wouldn't be a killer in this respect but in deference to the fact that the cases necks have split after multiple loadings I would not usually use them for full steam loads. Normally good practice to keep cast load cases separate anyway.

Moral of the story though is that it is far better to anneal regularly from the get go with valuable cases to prevent case loss down the track

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