Boolit Hardness--an observation

[Shuz]

Folks--Yesterday I found a bunch of boolits I cast on 7/21/ 2003 and air cooled, from clip-on wheel weights plus 1% tin. Normally, I test my boolits a few days after casting, but this time I neglected to do so for whatever reason. On 10/2/2006 they tested Saeco 7 (Bhn 11). On 7/3/12, this batch still tested Saeco 7. I'm gonna save a few of these and test them again in 5 to 10 years(if I live that long!)

[MtGun44]

Won't change. Only the heat treated ones change, as they slowly anneal at normal
temps. Hardening lead is a temporary process on a long time scale. Soft is soft
forever.

Bill

[Char-Gar]

That has been my experience as well. Bullets will gain hardness over the first two to three weeks, but after than they don't loose hardness. I have 15 year old bullets that still test as hard as they did a month after casting.

I do not water quench or oven temper bullets. I just use the proper alloy and air cool. I tend to cast in volumn during cool weather and put the bullets up unsized and lubed until I need some. I them taken them, lube and size them and then load and shoot them.

[popper]

They won't change, just shoot em.

[Shuz]

What you guys said really makes sense now that I think about it! Maybe that's why I've had such consistent results with air cooled boolits in the .44 mag for so many years.
I've been experimenting with heat treated boolits of various alloys in the .250 Sav for many years and recently came to "a" conclusion that air cooled lino seems to be the most consistent.(Saeco 10)

[Char-Gar]

Tempering or hardening of bullets is something that has become the norm for many folks over past ten or twenty years without understanding why.

Years ago, we oven tempered WW metal to get a rifle alloy that would be as hard as linotype without the expense of linotype.

I can't remember the name of the guy, but quite some time back, a guy was loading very hot 45-70 loads with granite hard bullets for use on very large and dangerous game, when pentration was the name of the game. He water dropped WW to get his super hard penetrating bullets.

The average guy got into the water droping game, and very few of them had any real need to do so. It just became a "easy" factor and everybody was doing it, so that must be the way to go.

Air cooled alloys are more stable and uniform that water dropped bullets. It is very easy to come up with a good alloy that required no tempering for anything but extreme use.

[John Boy]

lead plus tin alloy will age in 6 -6 weeks. Add antimony & arsenic - several months IIRC

[Shiloh]

Good ing Char-Gar. Especially on the air hardened WW.
I water drop not only for the hardening effect, but if it is wet, I know it isn't hot.
I have been burned by cooled boolits.

Shiloh

[Char-Gar]

Good ing Char-Gar. Especially on the air hardened WW.
I water drop not only for the hardening effect, but if it is wet, I know it isn't hot.
I have been burned by cooled boolits.

Shiloh

I always thought a burn ever now and then was the badge of the bullet caster. But I have dropped a hot bullet down a boot top and that is really no fun.

[Old Caster]

I always thought a person had to pay to learn and after getting burned with a "cool" bullet it should be a long time before it is repeated. When in the Army shooting pistol for the AMU in 1965 in Germany I was told that just about everyone used too hard of a bullet for pistol shooting and it was a myth that was being perpretrated by magazine writers and it caused inaccuracy and leading in barrels. I never listened and had to learn for myself with years of experimenting because I fell for the hype also and figured, what could the AMU know anyway. It would have been easier to listen. -- Bill --

[MikeS]

I've never water dropped, or oven heat treated any of my boolits. So far I've also never burned myself with a hot boolit. When I cast I have a small fan (about 4" or so) that I have blowing on the area where I put my just cast boolits, and I can cast 100 boolits or so, and when I'm picking them up to put in a container (I pickup 2 at a time so I can count them, and check for culls) by the time I get to the last pour they're cool to the touch (cool as in I can't tell exactly which are the last pour as they're just as cool as the rest of the pile). Been doing it this way for almost a year, since I moved my casting from the backyard into the garage. So far my boolits have worked the way I want them to, they shoot well, and I've yet to get any leading that required scrubbing to remove.

[Bret4207]

I believe the reason most people quench boolits is some misguided belief that they are producing a better boolit somehow. I went through that stage myself.

[popper]

lead plus tin alloy will age in 6 -6 weeks. Add antimony & arsenic - several months IIRC Really? Not.

[dnepr]

Back in 2005 I cast and water dropped a whole bunch of lee 310 gr for my .444 marlin , tested them last year when I got my lee hardens tester , still at 22 bhn , I don't know what bhn they started at but they are still pretty hard , micro groove barrels are supposed to do well with fat and hard , haven't pushed the velocity yet but the shoot pretty well at " plinking " velocitys so far

[Char-Gar]

I always thought a person had to pay to learn and after getting burned with a "cool" bullet it should be a long time before it is repeated. When in the Army shooting pistol for the AMU in 1965 in Germany I was told that just about everyone used too hard of a bullet for pistol shooting and it was a myth that was being perpretrated by magazine writers and it caused inaccuracy and leading in barrels. I never listened and had to learn for myself with years of experimenting because I fell for the hype also and figured, what could the AMU know anyway. It would have been easier to listen. -- Bill --

The common wisdom back then was a bullet for the 1911 had to be hard to take and hold the shallow rifling. No less personage that Elmer Keith repeated this often. About 1965 I was shooting a Colt Gold Cup that have been over the bench of Bob Chow and the Speer 200 gr. swaged H&G clone came out. Those bullets were butter soft and I just knew they would not do well in my pistol. I loaded up a hundred and age out the X-ring of the target and what trash was left in the barrel brush out easy. So much for the myth of needing hard bullets for a 1911 barrel.

I shot many thousand of those Speer bullets with complete sucess. You still hear today on this and other boards how you need very hard bullets in the 1911 pistol. Like the slasher in Friday the 13th, this seem to never be killed off.

I think it was Will Rogers that said; "Some men learn by reading, some by watching and some by listening. The rest have to pee on the electric fence."

[Char-Gar]

I believe the reason most people quench boolits is some misguided belief that they are producing a better boolit somehow. I went through that stage myself.

I learned pretty quick. I quenched a mess of 452423 and let them sit a month before I tried to size them from .455 to .452. I was using my old Lyman 45. I busted some linkage in that old weak machine trying to size granite hard bullets. That was it for me.

The ones I sized before I quit, shot no better and maybe worse than the air cooled and leaded like heck.

[303Guy]

I used to cast two alloys for my 44 mag, one from some ugly alloy that came out of the bottom of an aluminium remelting furnace and the other from WW plus lino. Now thosere were pretty castings and I used them for serious shooting and the uggly castings for plinking. Then one day I recovered a 'pretty' boolit and found the groove impression was gas cut away leaving the rifling impression pretty much the larger diameter. No skidding and no leading but anyway, I decided to compare the two and discovered the ugly alloy which cast ugly looking boolits (in color, not fillout) shot way better. It was a softer alloy and I assumed it was bumping up in the forcing cone while the much harder alloy remained under groove diameter.

[youngda9]

So this thread will be resurrected in 5 years. Marking my calender now !!