About
Meet the Owner, Riaan Erasmus
My love for the outdoors started at an early age. I was born and raised in South Africa, and some of my fondest childhood memories are going fishing off the rocks with my dad. When I was about ten years old, my brother got a new bicycle. My parents always treated us equally, so I could have one too if I wanted to. For some reason, long forgotten, I wasn’t that interested. Also long forgotten, is where the idea came from that an air rifle might be a good alternative. To cut a long story short, I became the proud owner of a Diana Mod. 34 air rifle, and that ignited a passion in me for hunting and shooting that exists to this day.
After finishing school, my family emigrated to New Zealand. This is where I had the opportunity to get exposure to other types of hunting and fishing than I was used to. While doing my carpentry apprenticeship and later my degree in mechanical engineering, I worked part-time in a hunting and fishing store to help finance my studies. This gave me the opportunity to try out different gear, see all the new gear that came onto the market and get feedback from customers on whether it was any good. I formed clear opinions on what was important for me in terms of function and quality when considering equipment.
In pursuit of my career, I made a move to Germany. I now work as an engineer in the automation sector, where the drive for technological innovation is huge. This has deepened my technical knowledge and given me the opportunity to work with the latest manufacturing techniques. When I look at equipment now, I see it in a different light. I’m able to analyse it and visualise why it works, or why it doesn’t work. I’m able to see where there is still untapped potential.
The reason for starting this company is simple. I want to be able to produce products that I want to own. The idea to manufacture a case annealer started when I wanted to buy one. I found that the available case annealers were either too expensive, especially when adding shipping and taxes on top, or they didn’t have the quality I was looking for. Then the thought came to me: “I could build one of those.” And that’s exactly what I did. My focus first and foremost is to produce quality products that work. I’m proud to uphold the tradition of Made in Germany. After that it’s a continuous process of evaluating my products against new technologies and manufacturing techniques, aiming to improve efficiency and drive down costs without sacrificing on quality.
Starting this company has embarked me on a new journey in my life. I’m looking forward to seeing where it will lead to…
About Trigger Springs
The last two decades have seen unprecedented changes and advancements in shooting sports, thanks to knowledge being freely shared and available on the internet, as well as technological advancements in the manufacturing of firearms and ammunition. Owning an accurate firearm and learning to become a proficient shot has never been easier. It’s widely accepted that one of the easiest ways to improve your accuracy is to have a quality trigger, since a lot of rifles still come from the factory with a trigger that is sub-optimal. For example, a lot of factory triggers have good mechanical characteristics, they simply have a trigger pull weight that is too heavy. A heavy trigger increases the risk of you inadvertently moving the firearm when pulling the trigger, because you have to apply a lot of force to it.
Enter the trigger spring. Most triggers use a setup of levers to connect the trigger blade to the sear. These components are usually reset with some springs. These springs are often also used to adjust the force that is needed to pull the trigger. By compressing the spring more or less, you can adjust the trigger pull weight. If you want a trigger pull weight that is outside of the adjustment range, you can often exchange a spring or two to give you a different range. Most people want a lighter trigger, as the factory usually picks a weight range that gives a safe trigger, so it’s almost never necessary to increase the trigger weight. To use a trigger spring with a lower spring rate is therefore often an easy and cheap way to upgrade your trigger.
There are some limitations to this upgrade, though. The mechanical properties of the trigger itself like tolerances, leverage ratios, angles of contacting surfaces, etc., also plays a big part in ultimate trigger weight. Often, it’s not enough to simply exchange the trigger spring. You might not be able to lower the trigger weight past a certain point, or you end up with an unsafe trigger. This is why we don’t offer trigger springs as light as some competitors – we want the trigger spring that will give you an improvement, but will still function safely in most firearms. It’s also why we recommend that trigger springs always be installed by a professional gunsmith, to ensure your trigger is working properly and is safe.
About Case Annealing
Annealing is a process by which metal is softened. It involves heating the metal to a certain temperature, which changes the properties of the metal. Apart from the change in the hardness of the metal, the grain structure of the metal also changes. By heating the metal to different temperatures, different material properties can be realised. Not only is the temperature important, but also how long the metal is heated for, as this can influence the material properties too. That’s why, for steel, they differentiate between annealing and normalising processes. With both processes the steel is heated to a specific temperature, but with annealing the steel is air cooled at room temperature and with normalising the steel is cooled slowly in the furnace. For brass we only refer to annealing, since the properties aren’t altered when it’s cooled slowly or quickly.
These properties have been well researched and documented for most common metals. For the most part, however, the temperature is considered as a variable while the time stays the same. Usually, the length of time is selected so that the piece of metal has been completely saturated by the heat, and the material properties are homogenous for the whole piece of metal. Eliminating one variable greatly simplifies the research. When we want to achieve different material properties in different areas of the same piece of metal, this complicates matters a lot, and is something we’ll look at in more detail when discussing annealing of brass cases for reloading.
Also worth noting, when talking about annealing, is the opposite process by which you harden metals. For steel, this is done by heating and then quenching (cooling the steel as rapidly as possible), which is also why it’s more sensitive to how you cool it when annealing. Brass can only be work hardened. Again considering brass cases, this means that you can only harden the brass by firing the rounds and then sizing the cases.
Why do we anneal brass cases for reloading?
When we fire a round, the brass case expands due to the pressure built up inside the case and pushes against the inside of the firearm’s chamber. After the bullet exits the muzzle and the pressure drops again, there is a slight spring-back of the material to the original shape. To use the case for reloading, we have to return it to a standardised size using a sizing die. When we seat a bullet, we slightly expand the case mouth again. All these things contribute to the brass work hardening.
There are two things that concern us when the case work hardens over time. First, the hardened material is more brittle, and more prone to cracking. If you get your brass cases for free from a range, this might not be a concern. But if you have a rare cartridge and the cases are expensive, you might appreciate it being able to use it a couple of times more. The second that happens, is that the mechanical properties of the case change. You require a certain amount of force to pull a seated bullet from the case. As the material hardens, the force required to pull a seated bullet change as well. For anyone concerned with precision, this simply means that there is a variance between a round loaded with a new case vs. a round loaded with a case that has been reloaded a few times.
Is it a dealbreaker when you don’t anneal your cases? Absolutely not! You can load quality ammunition without annealing. Annealing is an advanced reloading technique intended for anyone who wants to achieve the highest possible consistency and precision from their reloaded ammunition.