A bit too hard lol

[sutherpride59]

So I cast some nice 200grn 309 boolits in my nice new NOE mold. The melt was 17lbs pure PB, 1.5 lbs Royo super hard, and .5lbs SN. Well I got the mold to hot and my melt was too hot and they were all very frosty lol. Well I water dropped them and they were so hard they climbed together like they were steel.i figured if I threw them into the toaster convection over and then water deopped them I could soften them up and get them to a more uniform hardness. Well I decided to drop them in ice water to make them very hard and surprising about half of them shattered lol. Anyone ever experienced this?

[Johnch]

LOL Sort of
Last year I made up some bullets for the AR 15

I wanted to try some "HARD" cast bullets and used Lino and a copper / lead bearing metal .... then water dropped them

I figured out quick I need to change my crimp ( I was crimping to tight )
As some were breaking at the crimp grove after the last stage of crimping

I got smart and used all but 10 to harden softer alloys instead of shooting them

John

[beemer]

I am not sure what to call it but I have a bucket of permanent type letters, it's hard. A bullet poured in a 140 gr. mold weights 125 grs. I poured a few for my 303 Brit but they broke off at the case mouth when they started up the feed ramp. The bullets sure were pretty.

[cas]

Home made frangible bullets, you could corner the market. ;)

[lightman]

When I first started casting I was working part time at a local paper. They had long before gotten away from hot type but one of the older guys had some stashed away that he gave to me. Not knowing any better I cast bullets from straight mono type and straight foundry type. They were extremely hard to get to fall out of the mold and hard to size. They didn't shoot that well either. But they were really nice looking well filled out bullets!

[sutherpride59]

That’s just it this wasn’t that hard of an alloy, basically wheel weight alloy more or less but **** these things got hard when I heat treated them.

[Echo]

I am not sure what to call it but I have a bucket of permanent type letters, it's hard. A bullet poured in a 140 gr. mold weights 125 grs. I poured a few for my 303 Brit but they broke off at the case mouth when they started up the feed ramp. The bullets sure were pretty.

Mono-type, 9% Sn, 19% Sb, and 'Way Too Hard to cast boolits out of. I use 7 parts WW ingots (35 lbs), 1 part (5 lbs) Mono, and add 1 % Sn for my 'A' alloy, about 2.75% Sn, 6+% Sb, and plenty hard for rifle boolits. Cut it 50/50 w Pb, and add another 1% Sn for my 'B' alloy for pistol boolits.

[sutherpride59]

It’s strange though as hard as these were out of the mold after being water dropped they should have come out softer with heat treating.

[sutherpride59]

never mind tried again and was able to soften them. Prior to heat treating they were 28bhn now they are back down to 18 bhn. Should age harden a little and hopefully end around 20bhn. Still curious why the bullets shattered being dropped into water with a rag at the bottom. Obviously the quick temp change but still first time that’s happened.