Question about ageing boolits for hardness

[mac1911]

I did not come up with any thing useing the search<
What I want to know is it best to let the boolits age and for how long before loading. Or can you load them up right away and go blast them?

I am useing for paper punching fun blasting with 50%WW 50% soft lead in 45acp and 38special

[NuJudge]

With Lead, we are mostly working with Lead-Tin-Antimony. Age hardening takes place by a number of mechanisms, usually gradually increasing hardness to some point, then dropping off. The particular alloying elements, their concentrations, the temperatures it is subjected to, all have an influence on what hardness is achieved.

Most of this age hardening happens through alloying elements migrating through the crystal lattice to little islands where they form hard compounds. These hard compounds do a better job of impeding deformation as the island gets bigger, so the bullet is harder, but only up to some ideal maximum size of island (my profs called them inclusions). Going beyond the maximum size would do a less efficient job of impeding deformation, giving softer readings.

These aging processes go slower as time goes on, so you should see most of the benefit in Lead rather quickly, as in days. This is because Lead at room temperature acts like most metals at very high temperatures. I've never read of anyone using precisely known alloys and testing to find the point of maximum hardness, but the time period is probably months or years at room temperature.

If you are going to get the most out of aging Lead, don't size your bullets. Any cold deformation of the bullet should make a Lead bullet experience what is called Recrystallization, where the bullet's Lead crystals spontaneously reorganize their crystal lattices, and the reorganized lattices don't impede deformation as well, and give softer readings. Remember, Lead acts like most other metals do at high temperatures.

I practically never shoot bullets quickly after casting. I drop them from the mold into a bucket of water, drain the water and empty the bucket on a towel, then several days later lubricate in a sizer die usually slightly larger than the bullet.

[btroj]

For your use just load em up and shoot.
I only worry about age hardness for bullets I am using for special purposes, like hunting. These are water dropped to speed up the hardening.

While bullets of many common alloys will harden with time it frequently doesn't matter to the gun. If the gun, or the application, doesn't care then why should you? Nit trying to sou d flip or sarcastic just pointing out that many times we worry over things that don't matter, at least not in the application we are discussing.

[Iron Mike Golf]

...If you are going to get the most out of aging Lead, don't size your bullets. Any cold deformation of the bullet should make a Lead bullet experience what is called Recrystallization, where the bullet's Lead crystals spontaneously reorganize their crystal lattices, and the reorganized lattices don't impede deformation as well, and give softer readings. Remember, Lead acts like most other metals do at high temperatures...

I am not convinced that's necessarily good advice, especially absent any qualifiers. Sizing does not change the hardness of the entire bullet. I say this having measured nose hardness before and after sizing (immediatedly and weekly for a month). I would expect some softening on the driving bands and other parts that make contact with the die. But how deep into the bullet does that softening go? If you size shortly after quenching, does the sized metal still age-harden?

One consideration is the reason for hardening to begin with. If you're hardening to withstand chamber pressure, then I suspect softening from sizing doesn't affect enough of the bullet to negate that.

If you're hardening to strengthen driving bands so they don't skid on the rifling, then maybe sizing has an adverse affect on hardness, but I suspect not. To my eyes, the die does not compress the bullet body as much as it shears. I can often see the metal shoved a bit into the lube groove. This leads me to believe the majority of the driving band remains at or near the quenched hardness. Bullet perfomance in my loads and guns reinforces this belief.

[RobS]

Bullet Aging takes form if a person is working with an antimony alloy and arsenic will speed up aging. The flip side a lead/tin binary alloy and you can cast and shoot without the aging issue.

So if you have an alloy that does age such as wheel weight (WW) alloy then reloading is something to consider if your resized brass case swages down the boolit to a point where it is undersized and leads your barrel. Many here will say, sure I cast them up and shoot them within hours, the next day, 2 years later ect. but don't say how they are loading their boolits and with what dies so on and so forth.

It takes about a week or so for all practical purposes to see an air cooled WW boolit reach it's aged hardness levels. Can a person reload and shoot such boolit before this time, you bet if their reloading practices will allow it to happen. I'm talking about an expander die that opens up the brass to relieve the stress that would swage down on the softer non-aged boolit. Most reloading dies these days are designed for jacketed bullets and the resizing die sizes the brass smaller in diameter to accomodate the jacketed diameters. For the 45 auto and 38 special the brass seems to not have the tension as other calibers and an air cooled, aged WW boolit usually does just fine during the seating and crimping stages and little to no case swage happens.

As with any reload, I simply pull a dummy round and measure the very edge of the base of the boolit to verify what's going on inside the brass.

[cbrick]

I am useing for paper punching fun blasting with 50%WW 50% soft lead in 45acp and 38special

Low pressure rounds, neither need or will benefit from quenching, heat treating, ageing or alloying for any additional hardness and could even be detrimental. Bullet fit in the firearm is far more important.

Bottom line, cast them, lube them, load them, shoot them.

If you switch over to a higher velocity/pressure cartridge strengthening the alloy by any of the above mentioned methods may be a benefit.

Rick

[geargnasher]

I agree with Rick, as long as your boolits are hard enough to resist being swaged undersized when seated in the cases (resulting in leading the bore). Easy to check, seat and crimp per normal routine, pull a boolit and measure the driving bands. If they're smaller than the groove or cylinder throats, you might have problems. Wait a week, try it again, and see what happens.

Gear

[Bret4207]

My experience- I've found that hardening takes place over a 2-3 week period with AC tertiary alloys. With WQ they harden much faster, achieving their final Bhn in a few days. Different alloys seem to react differently. The softening thing? Takes years. I have boolits I cast in the late 80's that are still within a point or 2 of what the box states they were.

To throw in a monkey wrench- each alloy will have a different level of "hardness" or "toughness" no matter how you treat it. Using just the Bhn tells you a limited amount about how the boolit will perform. Yes, I've said this before, yes, I know it's boring, yes, it's a pet peeve of mine. But Bhn isn't the whole story.

[mac1911]

I casted,lubed,sized, loaded 20 rounds with in 48 hours. The longest part was waiting for the LEE Tumble lube to dry.
I started with a clean bore, used RCBS dies on a hornady clasic press,
Loaded 5 grains of bulls eye
230gn TL round nose bullets useing the LEE mold
CCI LP primers
assorted cases
I found no visable signs of lead or much powder/lube residue that I have read about.
@ 15 yards with my stock S&W 1911 shooting more for function than accuracy was able to keep all 14 rounds I shot at the paper plate with in the circle. The other 6 rounds went to hitting a clay target @ 25 yards which I got with the 5th shot.

Thanks all, I just happen to re read about hardness AFTER I loaded up some. I am going to try and retrieve some of the bullets from the back stop.

[white eagle]

load shoot have fun
don't sweat the small stuff

[geargnasher]

If you want a better, faster drying tumble-lube formula, visit our lube forum and read the sticky by Recluse called "tumble lube---easy and mess-free". We've come to call the formula "45/45/10" and it works well. Dries in less than an hour, won't gum up your dies, and smokes much less than straight liquid Alox.

The secret to making it the most effective is the application, use VERY LITTLE. Recluse explains all that and has a bunch of good pictures.

Gear

[williamwaco]

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load shoot have fun
don't sweat the small stuff

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This is not rocket science, it is supposed to be FUN - and save money.

After casting, if you can pick them up and hold them in your bare hands, they are ready to lube and load - and shoot.

[357shooter]

What they all said:

For your needs and alloy, you can cast load and shoot all in the same day if you want. With no problems for 38 special and 45 acp. Start blasting...

[mac1911]

yeah, like to hear it....Im a plinker at heart so the cheapest I can plink the happier I am