best alloy for toughness without brittleness and heating and quencing bullets

[shotstring]

What do you boys find workds best to create a bullet that is tough yet not brittle, will hit a steel ram hard but will not shatter? What alloy do you find to be the best to start with and do you first quenche in water as if falls from the mold, then heat again and quenche in super cold icewater to make that bullet strong and miable but not able to either shatter or break on impact.

There are stories that say a bullet heated up in an oven or micro will become tough so that it smashes down a bit with a hammer, while a linotype bullet shatters under the same impact, spoiling the shot.

Staight razors are quenched in lead to get the best temper by one company in france. What is the secret for our bullets?

[Lloyd Smale]

best alloy ive found for overall toughness in at handgun velocitys is 5050 ww/lino air cooled. That been said ive never seen a straight linotype bullet fail on any game animal at handgun velocitys. Ive never seen one fail in penetration testing either but i have seen heat treated bullets fail under severe testing.

[Bret4207]

Need more info shotstring, mainly what velocity are you aiming for? Lotta difference between 750 fps out of a 38 and 2400fps out of a 35 Whelen. Also, are you talking FN/RN or hollow point? What caliber? Sounds like your shoot steel targets so why would it matter?

As general rule a fairly soft alloy like ww, ww+Lino, or heat treat straight ww hold together pretty well up to a certain point. I don't shoot steel so can't say when it begins to fail.

BTW- Never heard of anyone using a microwave to heat treat boolits. Don't think it would last long judging by my one experience with a metal can and a microwave.....

[felix]

Bret and Lloyd are both correct. Also, you can increase the "stick time" on metal plates by making the boolit tougher with copper, but that requires exquisite detail when making the boolits. If 85 percent of the boolits weigh within 0.1 grain per batch run, after getting the lead and temps just right (can take up to an hour from the pot turn on), then you will have extreme stick time. The culprit is the copper because it comes out of the alloy immediately upon cooling, and the name of the game is to make that copper "coating" as consistent from boolit to boolit as is possible. If you don't have the patience necessary to fix up the alloy, stay away from copper augmentation usually obtained from copper-containing babbit. (The babbit folks flux with strange stuff, and pour under very strict conditions, which is not conducive to home molds). ... felix

[montana_charlie]

I have no advice on 'how', so I'm still stuck on 'why'.

Obviously, you feel it's necessary to impart more of the bullet's energy to the steel target, so I assume you are hitting..but the targets aren't falling.

Finding a hardness which keeps the bullet in one piece, but does not dent or hole the target seems to walk a fine line.

Would more velocity or heavier bullet do the trick...or would shot placement be a useful solution?
CM

[Jon K]

shotstring,

All have a point, and my take is that it all depends on what you're shooting, and what you're comfortable with. Maybe I should have said "confident with".

I use for Silhouette- Pistol or Lever Action WW+12% linotype air cooled 10 bhn. I have tried straight WW, up to WW+60% lino & Lyman #2 alloy. Boolit weight, speed and where you're shooting are all important factors. Some ranges Rams are tough due to various reasons- stands, wind, etc. I've tried water drop & heat treat, but it's not for me - too lazy. I settled on 12% lino only because it fills out better than10%, on ALL my molds.
Going too hard will and too fast will often explode rather than knock down the target.

So, the bottom line is EXPERIMENT, the final choice is yours, what you feel is best for your gun, and range conditions.

Have fun Shooting,
Jon

:lovebooli

[454PB]

I've messed around with heat treating quite a bit, more as a interesting activity than a need for additional hardness. I have a large supply of monotype and linotype, which is a lot less work than heat treating. As Lloyd says, I've never seen a boolit fracture or fail in meat regardless of the hardness. However, I used to do a lot of shooting at home made steel gongs, and every boolit shattered at impact velocity above about 900 fps.

[shotstring]

I shoot 44 mag out of an old El Dorado Arms target SA revolver, 7 1/2 bbl. These guns were the predesessor for the Freedom Arms guns of today, but made decidedly better. They came stock with a super trigger and a Douglas barrel and the stainless steel they used was so hard it was destroying tool bits like crazy when it was machined. I was fortunate enough to purchase 2 of the first 10 guns made, one of which I still have and shoot. I've had the gun for over 20 years, and haven't even been able to put a score mark on the cylinder after thousands of rounds through the gun. And it's a tack driver.

I haven't been casting my own bullets in the past for it however, and the problem that I describe was not my own but voiced by another silhouette shooter that was having his bullets shatter on the rams without knocking them down. He swore that by heat treating them slightly and quenching them in ice water it alleviated his problem. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, so wondered if anyone else here might have had the same problem or discovered the same or a different solution.