cast bullets in oven lower bhn number?

[rp85]

hello;

the bullets are cast with wheel weights, lee 358-200 mold, water quenched in cold water. bhn number is 16+ but would like to reduce the bhn number back to 12. if I place some of these bullets in a 425 deg oven for @ 1 hour and then allow to cool down slowly will the bhn number go down.

thx for any input.

rp

[Rcmaveric]

Yes that would anneal them. I don't think they need to be in there an hour though. Just heat them for about 30 minutes then alloy them to air cool.

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[Adam Helmer]

hello;

the bullets are cast with wheel weights, lee 358-200 mold, water quenched in cold water. bhn number is 16+ but would like to reduce the bhn number back to 12. if I place some of these bullets in a 425 deg oven for @ 1 hour and then allow to cool down slowly will the bhn number go down.

thx for any input.

rp

rp,

I water quench all my cast boolits. If you wanted a Bh of 12, why did you quench them in the first place? I have never used that oven trip. I think your easiest and best procedure would be to simply melt down your boolits and recast them WITHOUT the water quench.

Adam

[StuBach]

rp,

I water quench all my cast boolits. If you wanted a Bh of 12, why did you quench them in the first place? I have never used that oven trip. I think your easiest and best procedure would be to simply melt down your boolits and recast them WITHOUT the water quench.

Adam

I would agree with Adam, just melt down and recast, I find bullets that are air cooled tend to have a nicer finish on them anyways

[Dusty Bannister]

If you melt the bullets and re-cast them, you will need to wait for the natural age hardening to get back to 12 BHN (or whatever the natural hardness might be for the alloy). By annealing them you may not have to wait as long. The OP might have found that the harder bullets are not mushrooming as preferred.

[Conditor22]

20 min at 400° will get you close
https://i.imgur.com/MI10JVy.png

[rp85]

thx for replies. I also water quench. just trying to adjust bhn number on 20-25 bullets just to try them out. do expect a bullet at 12 bhn should mushroom some, but the real question is how well do they shoot in a 35 Remington marlin. again thx for replies.

rp

[charlie b]

See chart at bottom of article.

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

[mdi]

Yep annealing harder bullets is possible. I can see no reason to suggest remelting unless there was no oven/heat source available. Many casters go through many steps other than pouring, lubing and sizing (and I would never water drop any of my cast bullets) so annealing is not unheard of...

[44magLeo]

If you want good expansion like a pure led boolit and the decreaseed leading like a hard boolit you can dual a dual cast boolit.
Cast up some of your boolit in pure lead. Cut the nose off these boolits. Place one of these noses in your mold. Then cast the base of the boolit with a harder alloy. With plenty of alloy on the sprue plate hold the mold over a heat source to long enough to melt the lead in the mold.
You can tell when it's hot enough by watching the lead on the sprue plate. It will melt.
This bonds the base and nose together.
Now you have a soft nose boolit that can withstand the higher pressure and not lead the bore.
This is a bit of work to get perfect boolits but for the few you will actually use it's worth it. Use your single alloy boolits for load development then load your hunting ammo with the soft points.
Leo

[cwlongshot]

I find it easier to cast them softer and powder coat them

The PC allows much softer alloy without the worry of leading or fouling the bore.

CW

[curioushooter]

Two things to orginial poster.

35 Rem has enough power to push a bullet fast enough that a solid, even of reasonably hard alloy, will have no problem expanding impressively. I cast 357 Magnum bullets from 91-6-3 pb-sn-sb and they expand most impressively at 1600+ FPS in calibrated ballistic gelatin+ 4 layers of denim. 35 Rem is so potent that you should be able to have the velocity at 100+ yards easily. Furthermore, the 200 grain weight will achieve ideal penetration depth. I've found that 170 grain and 180 grainers are a touch too light and go only 16-19 inches or so.

So just cast up using an alloy that contains no more than 3% antimony, which makes alloys brittle and bullets fragment.

Basically 50% lead 50% COWW and some tin and magnum shot (to provide arsenic).

I am interested in oven annealing for another reason though.

I would like to be able to have a bullet with a softter nose than the base so I may compare it to a hollow point.

This stuff about casting in lead and cutting off noses and putting them in a mold and then pouring the base alloy over it and heating sounds like it is about as much of a PIA as possible. Seems like you could get maybe a few bullets done in an hour?

The oven annealing makes sense to me. Cast up on an alloy that has a target hardness of ~BHN 12 (all I find is needed for 357 mag) after being water quenched. Then stand them up in a pan and cover up to the shoulder with water. Then take a torch to the noses.

I've annealed brass this way and it works very well. What I don't know is if it will be able to reduce the hardness enough to matter (enable expansion at real world 357 Mag revolver velocities).

If it does work it could provide a deeper penetrating more modestly expanding bullet for magnum handguns.

All my gel testing to date has consistently proven that solid bullets do not expand at all under 1400 FPS, but I've always run alloy hard enough to prevent leading. Since the nose (on a SWC type) metal shouldn't be touching the barrel at these velocities, it is possible to make it out of a softer alloy.

Years ago I would paper jacket bullets to allow a softer alloy to be used. This was a lot of work and it had its own problems (like paper sticking out of the case which collects all sorts of crud).

[charlie b]

One issue is it takes a while for the process, ie, heating the entire mass you want softened. And how do you know when you reach that temperature? Brass cases are easy cause they are so thin they heat up quickly and there is a color change. Also easy to keep the bases cool since the water can get inside the case as well as on the outside. Lead is thick and no color change to let you know when you hit the right spot, not even counting that the melting point is not far away.

You will be spending more time than the guy who molds base from one alloy and nose from another.

IIRC, there used to be a mold 'pair' for such a project. One mold was a base with a special shaped cavity. The other was the nose portion. The two parts were epoxied together.

If you want to use a softer alloy, then either do like you said, paper patch, or powder coat.

I would hollow point and powder coat if I was dead set on mushrooms with lower speed cast bullets.

[35remington]

No alloy adjustment from as cast wheelweights is needed for good expansion performance on deer presuming standard 35 Remington velocities and typical whitetail deer shooting ranges.

Said by a guy who does just that in a 35 Remington Marlin 336. With the RCBS variant of your bullet three inch five shot groups at 100 yards are achievable which is all the accuracy needed.

[curioushooter]

Brass cases are easy cause they are so thin they heat up quickly and there is a color change. Also easy to keep the bases cool since the water can get inside the case as well as on the outside. Lead is thick and no color change to let you know when you hit the right spot, not even counting that the melting point is not far away.

Excellent points.

Seems like the easiest way to do this is just cast a hollowpoint.