Hardening boolits

[Lefty SRH]

Is there another way to harden cast boolits besides adding antimony or water dropping, specifically after sizing the boolit?

[357shooter]

Depending on the alloy, there's heat treating. They will need to be lubed afterwards.

http://www.lasc.us/HeatTreat.htm

[btroj]

Heat treating can be done after sizing but before lubing. Heat the bullets to 450 or so, keep them there a bit, water quench. A bit, not much required, of arsenic helps here too.
If air called a bulet with antimony will age harden a bit. This depends upon antimony content. Others will chime in as they have more knowledge on this than I do.

If you are looking for a way to harden a bullet without having antimony, forget it. Lead /tin alloys are always going to be soft, in a relative sense.

What sort of application are you looking at? Fitting the hardness to the application is important.

[williamwaco]

After sizing is pretty much to late for anything but heat treating.

1+ with 357 shooter.

They also do a treatment of water quenching on that site.

[Lefty SRH]

Heat treating can be done after sizing but before lubing. Heat the bullets to 450 or so, keep them there a bit, water quench. A bit, not much required, of arsenic helps here too.
If air called a bulet with antimony will age harden a bit. This depends upon antimony content. Others will chime in as they have more knowledge on this than I do.

If you are looking for a way to harden a bullet without having antimony, forget it. Lead /tin alloys are always going to be soft, in a relative sense.

What sort of application are you looking at? Fitting the hardness to the application is important.

I think my boolits got too hard after water dropping. They began to stick in my dies in the 4500 and ended up breaking pieces on the presses. So I was looking for another way to harden the boolits after casting and sizing.

[btroj]

How much are you sizing them down?
I have a group buy mould for a 44 Keith bullet that casts around .435 to .436. I use a Lee push thru to take them to .4325 before running them thru my Star for exactly the reason you stated.
Hard bullets aren't so much a problem for a sizer, it is the hard and way over sized that kills them. If sizing much more than .002 down I prefer in many cases to use a Lee push thru first. My reloading press doesn't even break a sweat doing sizing that will kill my Star.

[Lefty SRH]

The .480 Ruger boolits drop .477-.478 and the RCBS sizing die is a .476 and the ones that came out were fininishing at .477"

[cbrick]

Lefty, not much info to go on.

What is the alloy?
What is the as cast diameter?
How much are you sizing them?
What firearm & load are you shooting them from? You may well not need hardened bullets, most do not.

Without any info it's pretty tough to give answers.

Rick

[Lefty SRH]

Alloy, straight WW
cast diam. is .477-.478
sized with a RCBS .476 die and they come out finished at .4765-.477
Firearm if Ruger SRH in .480R

[btroj]

Try water dropping them, drying them quickly, and sizing the same day. After a few days to a week they will evoke much harder. Use this time to harden to your advantage.

[rintinglen]

In both the RCBS no.1 and Lyman No 3 bullet casting hand books there are detailed articles on heat treating cast bullets by Dennis Marshall, an engineer whose father was Frank Marshall, a Former CBA great. Basically, you cast your boolits, then size and seat gas checks normally, but do not lube them. Place them in a tray made of wire mesh and put them in the oven at 450 -460 degrees for 30-45 minutes. Immediately remove them from the oven and plunge them into a bucket of cool water. You may then lube them by running through a sizer die .001 larger than the boolit (for example .360 for a .359 boolit), or else use a liquid allox type lube. I have heat treated thousands of boolits in the fashion, with excellent results. My 30-40 Winchester has shot hundreds of 311-291 boolits prepared in exactly this fashion at speeds of 2300 fps using LLA.

[Bret4207]

Glen, Are you sure Frank and Dennis were father and son? That's the first I've heard that. I haven't looked at Franks stuff in some time, but I seem to recall him talking about daughters.

[PacMan]

Quite a bit of diffrence between sizing down a .358 bullet .002 than sizing a .478 bullet .002.
The larger the dia. the more stress it puts on the sizer.

Several good replys above so you should be on go now.

[OLPDon]

Try lowering the temp on the aloy, and water drop easy to give it a try. I have found that high temp on the lead seems to make the bollits a bit brittle. All I do is water drop and that is because it make it easy to cast. Also you might want to slow down on the speed of casting next boolit. These changes are simple and you don't have to heat treat which is a pain in the butt.
Don

[DLCTEX]

I shoot the Lee 400 gr boolit in my Tarus Raging Bull at 1300 fps -air cooled WW with great accuracy and no leading . Sized .476.

[Gohon]

My experience has been that water dropped casts will reach their final hardness withing 24-48 hours where as air cooled takes a couple weeks.

Something certainly seems out of whack as you're only sizing down .0005-.0015 on casts of probable only 18-20 BHN which is as hard as the casts got the few times I water dropped straight wheel weights. On the other hand, the Lee push through sizer is the only sizing die I have experience with and I've never had a problem with them.

[Iron Mike Golf]

What is the hardness of your water dropped boolits at the time you size them? All WWs are not created equal, so saying your alloy is straight WW doesn't really say much. Agree with sizing same day as casting. Initially, water dropped will be same hardness as air coolled.

[Lefty SRH]

The few that we're tested read 20BHN