Water drop and freeze

[crabo]

In another thread, I read where a poster water drops his boolits and then freezes them until he gets a chance to size and lube. This method works for him.

Does anyone have a line of reasoning weather or not this works as well as sizing within a few hours? I want to water drop some boolits, but I may not get the chance to size them tonight or tomorrow. My schedule depends on how life goes in the next few hours.

Thanks,

[SciFiJim]

I guess it would be a matter of what takes place metallurgically speaking in the final hardening of alloy. I wouldn't think that a home freezer could get cold enough to make a difference. Personally, I don't worry about it. If I have to wait a long time to size them I can always heat treat the sized boolits to regain lost hardness.

[fecmech]

We had a discussion a couple years ago about this and some of the more informed members on the board said that the cold slowed the hardening process by slowing the molecular movement in the alloy IIRC. Also the converse was true that the aging process could be accelerated by storing the boolits at elevated temps say 150 deg. I have used the freezer method and it works. At the time of the discussion I cast and water dropped a lot of 358429 WW alloy bullets. Some I froze and the rest I left at room temp. After the first day the room temp bullets required more effort to size then they had the day of water dropping. The bullets from the freezer(after warming to room temp) were noticeably easier to size than the bullets that were aging at room temp for up to a week afterwords. It's easy enough to check, try it for your self. Take the bullets out of the water, dry them and put them in the freezer. Leave others at room temp and try sizing each a couple days later. There is not a whole lot of effort involved to put a bunch of bullets in a plastic bag and set in the freezer.

[captain-03]

I am by no means an expert caster. I use both an RCBS lube/sizer and Lee push through sizing dies to size boolits. I use mostly water dropped WW for all my pistol loads. I have had no problems sizing boolits regardless of how long I let 'em sit after casting before running them throught the sizing process. The only notable difference I have observed was with some 440gr 500S&W boolits ... I just don't see this being an issue of concern regarding pistol boolits. I am just now getting into casting for my rifles -- mostly 30cal.

[fecmech]

I agree with you that it's not a problem per se to run aged water dropped bullets through a size die. I usually run 500-1000 through my star when I do it and doing it right away (my usual method) simply requires less effort than letting them age harden. That's all just a little easier on me and the Star handle.

[monadnock#5]

It all depends on what you're looking for.

Water dropping can be be an end in its own. Even if I was casting "pure" lead round balls I would water drop just for the ease, simplicity and speed of the process. I haven't towel dropped boolits since I first took up casting years ago, as I found it a true PITA that required way too much bench space.

Now if you're water quenching for the purpose of accelerating hardening process, and can't size your boolits within the 48 hour window after casting, freezing might make sense.

Sizing softens boolits in the effected area, which is to say the area engaged by the lands and grooves. If done within the 48 hour grace period, the boolit continues to harden and no damage done. If done past the grace period, the skin of the boolit softened by the sizing will not reharden, and will stay soft.

I don't see a lot of uses for a boolit with a hardened core and a soft shell as a final product.

Mr. Robbins has explained in a previous thread that his practice for match boolits is to water quench, wait the 30 days for full hardening to take place, size them and then oven heat treat. Waiting for full hardening before sizing makes the boolits less susceptible to deformation during sizing. Thank you for the explanation Felix, I was listening and I got it.

I'll try freezing a small batch of boolits to experiment with at some point. Sounds interesting. The trouble is, I like to cast big batches, and I don't see 20 or30 pounds of boolits in either freezer as conducive to continued marital bliss.

[mrbill2]

"Sizing softens boolits in the effected area, which is to say the area engaged by the lands and grooves."
#5
How far into the bullet does this softening take place and how do I test my bullets to see if I have softened the bullets I cast?
Mr. Bill2

[Fixxah]

I suspect that with slow bullets there is no appreciable difference whether or not you wait to size them at a later date but YMMV. Then again, I don't water drop any.

[MtGun44]

Works for aluminum, which also hardens by precipitation hardening over time.
This is used commercially (or was years ago, not sure if it still is) for "icebox rivets"
which are aluminum rivets that are used in high stress applications. The rivets are
heat treated and then frozen before they can precipitation harden. They are then
pulled out and installed while they are soft enough to form a head, and in a while
they warm up and restart the hardening process and wind up as a hardened
rivet that would not be possible to form a head on if it was in the hard state.

Not sure if the lead alloys work the same way, but it sounds plausible.

Bill

[TAWILDCATT]

I think its a waste of time and energy to harden pistol bullets.its also a waste to load them to maximum pressures.I shoot WW in rifle at 1680,and it will kill a deer as dead as all this hot shot cartridges.:coffee:[smilie=1:

[Bass Ackward]

The science of hardening. It is a science because it .... depends.

Hardening is only part of the equation. At some point in the sizing process the whole bullet is affected and the bullet actually lengthens. Lengthening also takes place from the path of least resistance. This means that the front half of the bullet expands forward and then when passed, the expansion occurs rearward. Unless the base is controlled, any internal defect will cause elongation to occur unevenly and the base to go out of square. This also means that the entire bullet structure is affected.

Translation: you don't have the hardness or the bullet that you THINK you do. And they ALL weight the same. :grin:

This sizing process is not uniform either. Bullet diameter affects it. In other words, there is a whole lot more margin for error in the larger bores, then smaller.

But leave hardening aside. Just take sizing itself using a hole that measures .4295. A .432 pure lead bullet ran through this sizer will measure .4295. The same bullet at 12 BHN will be about .430. 15 BHN will be .4304. 20 BHN will be about .431. 35 BHN will probably not get through the sizer, but will be close to .4315 if it does. So if you had 12 BHN WW that is about 8 BHN right after molding and you have bullets up to 20 BHN hardness you can be almost .0015 difference in diameter.

That was a .432 diameter slug. Now what happens to a .435 put through the same die at the same hardness? Answer: You pick up about .0005 for each hardness and you will not get the 35 BHN through it. And they are LONGER.

So final hardness AND FINAL SIZE are determined by where the bullets are when you size them. Mold for a long time and you will have multiple diameters upon sizing. If in the smaller bores, multiple lengths as well. This affects seating depth because the seating die only knows OAL. This is one of the biggest problems for rifle shooters using fast powders if they don't understand. They think they are molding bad bullets or lube or a multitude of other problems and what they are doing (assuming no voids in their slugs) is changing the pressure curve. Just like they were changing powder charge. How much? Depends on final sizing and all the above. But .... they .... all .... weigh the same. :grin:

Many hand gunners say water dropped bullets are more accurate. Are they? Or are they simply shooting bigger diameters that work better for them? Some will say who cares. I say, if it ain't broke ..........................

To answer what I see with HTing, temp does affect the hardening process along with all of the above. And while ice water will not affect over all hardness much, it can slow the hardening process to buy you precious time so that final diameters are closer to the same. Once hard, and frozen, hardness can be maintained over a much longer period of time. I don't shoot water dropped much anymore considering all the variables, so someone else will have to investigate that. I store AC now, and simply HT when called for.

[44man]

Nice job Bass! :drinks:
It all depends on how much you size and many do size too much so surface softening will be deeper. In those cases heat treating is best. I do very well with water dropped because I size almost nothing, using a lot of lapped out Lee dies. I do not notice a difference if age hardened before sizing.
I have only one boolit for my .475 that I like to size soon. It drops at .476" so I lube and run through a .476" die to remove excess lube. This boolit will harden and grow to .478" in a few days. My bore is .475" and throats are .4765" but rounds drop into the chambers and have approached 1/2" at 50 yards and under 1" at 100 yards.
How important is the increase in size? :confused: I haven't found any to tell the truth. If I don't get them sized and they sit for weeks, the die will size them down to throat size or a little larger and they shoot exactly the same. The skin softening is too shallow to effect rifling grip and recovered boolits from both methods will show the same amount of skid before the boolit takes the rifling.
If I air cool, size, heat treat and lube, I see no difference either, skid, groups and POI are the same. So for all of my revolvers, I just never worry about time to size anymore, sometimes I make a huge pile and put them away and they might not be sized for 2 years. If you read my post about sighting the .44, all groups were 3/4" and I had one of 1/4" at 50 yards. This with boolits cast a while ago and just lubed and sized before loading.
Tawildcatt says it is a waste to harden revolver boolits---NO IT IS NOT BY ANY STRETCH! The revolver is the worst gun to drive a soft boolit through! My hard alloy of 30 BHN is more accurate then hardened, 22 BHN, WW metal and far more accurate then air cooled. As I soften the alloy I will get many more fliers even though the core group is tight. None will lead my bore but to just look for a lack of leading without concern for accuracy will not let you shoot to the guns potential.
But then a problem crops up with velocity. These hard boolits work fine on deer if held below 1400 fps. Speed them up to 1680 fps and you will start to lose deer. Faster boolits need to start to expand over 1400. Air cooled WW's are good until they start to shed the nose in an animal, then you need to soften more. Water dropped 50-50 WW's and pure is better, hard yet ductile. Somewhere in there a hollow point is great too.
Anyway, back to the beginning, unless I was shooting BR, I would not worry about time to size unless you are sizing too much. 90% of the time you do not need to size anyway. Hard to find an oversize mold to start with. I have never found a need to size unless the round will not chamber or the boolit nose will not enter the throat or leade.
If the surface is softened .0005" deep and the rifling is .004" or deeper, what harm does it do?

[Bass Ackward]

These hard boolits work fine on deer if held below 1400 fps. Speed them up to 1680 fps and you will start to lose deer. Faster boolits need to start to expand over 1400.

Air cooled WW's are good until they start to shed the nose in an animal, then you need to soften more. Water dropped 50-50 WW's and pure is better, hard yet ductile. Somewhere in there a hollow point is great too.


Jim,

Ya, yaaaaaaaa. I read your 44 post. Great 50 yard groups can be shot when your barrel is 49 feet 10 inches and the bullet is 1 1/2" long!

I needed to write this down. :grin:

Just so you know, you can actually get by with slower ones that expand too. Cave men threw rocks. And then we advanced. :grin: ( GEICO commercial )

[44man]

Jim,

Ya, yaaaaaaaa. I read your 44 post. Great 50 yard groups can be shot when your barrel is 49 feet 10 inches and the bullet is 1 1/2" long!

I needed to write this down. :grin:

Just so you know, you can actually get by with slower ones that expand too. Cave men threw rocks. And then we advanced. :grin: ( GEICO commercial )
YES,YES, YES, nothing better then a pure, slow round ball or heavy boolit, we all know that. I love muzzle loaders and never lost an animal with a round ball or Maxi Ball. I have taken a lot of deer with my cap and ball revolver with round balls too.
The problem is to get soft to shoot with the powders and velocities now shot. Even slow with a fast powder makes a lot of problems that you do not get with BP.
How I wish I could shoot pure lead from my revolvers but it is not to be and hit anything past 20 yards or keep the bore free of lead.
If it was right to do, the gas check and jacketed bullets would never have been designed and we would have no use for them.
Just imagine a pure lead boolit from a .300 mag at 3300 fps---SPPPLAAAAT! :mrgreen: It might explode right out of the muzzle though. :Fire:
We have advanced and that means a whole new set of ideas and changes. We are fooling with boolits two to three times heavier then ever used. We are working with revolvers that generate 40,000 to 60,000 PSI chamber pressures.
Besides that, let's go back in time to the .38 using pure lead wad cutters. A pinch of Bullseye and what did you get? Leading that filled the rifling and they even leaded the outside of the gun and cylinder fronts from squirting out of the gap. A nice water dropped WW wad cutter would be so much better along with a good dab of Felix lube. [smilie=1:
On to the slower boolits and I agree 100%. The problem is my revolver in 45-70 NEEDS a certain velocity for accuracy so I NEED a hard drive band. But they zip through deer like armor piercing. I need the nose to expand to slow the boolit in the deer and destroy more internals. I can only soften the whole boolit so much before my range is cut down to the point I can just use a bow.
This IS NOT A PROBLEM with a .44, .45 or .475 and very hard boolits with a large mepat will flip deer on their cork. Insides are mush. The 45-70 will also do this with a hard boolit if I start shooting them at 150 yards where the boolit has slowed. A hard boolit with a good meplat works better at LOWER velocities.
There is no need to look for a soft boolit or an expanding boolit if velocity is kept in the working range. That means better accuracy too.
I made the mistake of falling in love with the hard WLN and WFN boolits after dropping a pile of deer. I figured that if I shot them faster, they would kill faster----WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, what a surprise, that is where a softer boolit is needed, not at the lower velocities.
Yeah, a soft boolit will work fine shot slow, but I WANT TO HIT THE DEER or a target or a pop can at 100 to 200 yards. I did not buy my revolvers to shoot 7 yards! :roll:

[wallenba]

Metalurgically maybe, I noticed that the aviation mechanics keep their AN- rivets in the refridgerator until they buck them.

[Bass Ackward]

The problem is my revolver in 45-70 NEEDS a certain velocity for accuracy so I NEED a hard drive band. But they zip through deer like armor piercing. I need the nose to expand to slow the boolit in the deer and destroy more internals. I can only soften the whole boolit so much before my range is cut down to the point I can just use a bow.
This IS NOT A PROBLEM with a .44, .45 or .475 and very hard boolits with a large mepat will flip deer on their cork.



On a rock, the meplat does all the work. So ............ keep the accuracy where it is and make it do less!

Meplats are pretty dumb. It doesn't know what caliber it is or how fast it is going. If you want to drive it fast and it is doing too much work, then cut the diameter of the meplat so that it thinks its a 44. Or down to a 357 if you want to go faster yet. Or shoot a lighter bullet so that it does slow down some. :grin:

My 45 caliber bullets have no greater than a 60% meplat. That's like a 64% on a 44. But you have the extra bullet weight with the 45 that keeps the bullet going too fast in a little deer.

Make sense?