Anybody tried this?

[Plinkster]

It's probably ridiculous and that's why I didn't find anything when searching for it but here goes. Has anyone tried water quenching just the base or say half the boolit body? My thought was to drop from a mold onto a towel and then set them into an aluminum cookie sheet with the right depth of cold water in it. I'll be trying some experiments soon so I'll post results and pics if anyone is interested. The thing that got me thinking on this was that I'm hollow pointing a 44 mold and I want to shoot the boolits sans check as I'm really really really cheap! If anyone has tried this and it doesn't work please save me the time involved in failing. I know about using dead soft lead in the nose and pouring and remelting hard alloy on top but I'd like to save a little processing if possible.

[303Guy]

There has been discussion of annealing just the nose of the boolits. Water quench them first then stand them in water to some level then flame heat the noses without melting them and they soften.

With the right alloy and a fancy mold one can actually cast them so the base shank hardens while the nose section remains soft. I don't know if that's ever been done deliberately but I've done it by accident.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-226F-1.jpghttp://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-010F-1.jpg

The mold is a nose pour and I designed it to cool the base section quicker than the nose so that the pouring funnel would supply melt to take up the shrinking boolit as it freezes. It worked plus it made two hardness boolits.

[stubshaft]

By the time you got through fiddling with it and got the base in the water it would have cooled to the point where it wouldn't harden.

[Bret4207]

By the time you got through fiddling with it and got the base in the water it would have cooled to the point where it wouldn't harden.

My thought too. An immense amount of extra work, for what? I cost is an issue then make your own GC's. GC designs w/o the GC seldom perform as well as with the GC.

[Plinkster]

I just realized I forgot to mention that the mold was formerly a GC design, Lee's 305gr. I just finished turning the check shank out of it and putting in the HP bores, so it now has a flat base, HP, two lube grooves vs one, and a crimp groove. I'll try and remember to post some pics of my handy work/mangling once I finish the HP pins. Thanks for the info guys I figured it might be an exercise in futility but you never know. 303guy that alloy looks a bit "babbit" to me, is that correct? Color is off a little lol. Looks like a great hunting projectile!

[Wayne Smith]

303guy's solution is a better idea, and you get a repeatable result. Your idea, if even successful, would result in such a wide variation of temps hitting the water you wouldn't know what you had. Water drop them first and then anneal in water. You can do this with flame or in an oven.

[303Guy]

Plinkster, that alloy is so secret not even I know what's in it!:mrgreen: It was a mix of all sorts and did have a chunk of lino thrown in. It had WW in it. It may have been simply a WW-lead mix with lino added and probably some bismuth too. It very likely had a little copper as well.

[Plinkster]

Wayne I'm going to try and prove you right when I get my mold together. I've got some massive tweezers I'll be using to set the boolits upright for my original idea and I'll water drop and then anneal noses to compare results even though I have a hunch what I'll see. If this hair-brained scheme doesn't pan out either way I can always do the two alloy soft nose for the few boolits I'd need for hunting.

[olafhardt]

You could stand them up on a dry cookie sheet, heat em up in the oven, then add water to the cookie sheet without taking it from the oven. Wear some protective gear! We can read your results even from the hospital lol.

[1Shirt]

I have nose softened a few of the longer 30 cal boolits with the base standing in water, and hitting the nose with a propane torch. Took a few tries to get it right without melting the nose, but it works.
1Shirt!