water hardening-does it work ?

[MOUNTAIN MIKE]

Always used pure lead for my projects but heard about water hardening the bullet to increase hardness instead of adding tin.

Pure lead is about a bhn of about 5 to 7 can i jump this up to 10 or 12 with water hardening.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Mountain mike

[sisiphunter]

The lead may harden a little by dropping the hot boolit from the mold into water. this quik cooling hardens the metal. I'm not sure how much harder you will get with pure lead. I've never tried pure lead as of yet.

Tin will not harden your lead. it will make your mix flow better and fill out the molds better.

Antimony is what you want. Wheel weights are a good source for this. A little anitmony in your mix will go a long way for helping to harden your alloy. Straight wheel weights will get you into the 10-12 range ish. Water quench these and you will jump up to the mid to high 20's.

I'm sure others will pipe in here soon. I am still really new at this (2 years now) and still have a ton to learn.

Hope this helps.

Matt

[303Guy]

MOUNTAIN MIKE, you said 'projects'. That's not the same as shooting. Are you making other things from lead? Adding tin toughens the lead a lot, reduces it's melting point and gives it a good fill-out and nice clean shine. (It does harden it a little but nothing near like antimony). It doesn't take much tin either. Adding tiny amounts of copper does the same thing but some tin seems to be needed in the alloy anyway, making it pointless unless increased toughness is desired. It's also more fun!

The simplest is to add a wheel weight and a little tin to the lead.

[RobS]

If it is plain lead or lead/tin alloy then you will not have any effects from water quenching; it will be the same hardness as it was before. You'll need antimony if you are wanting to water quench bullets to a desired hardness. Should you have access to WW's they are a good place to start.

Welcome to the forum!!!

[303Guy]

Welcome to the forum!!!

Like RobS says!

RobS, you just led me to understand why my second lot of 'almost pure' lead with added tin was different to the first - the first still had residual antimony in it!

[MOUNTAIN MIKE]

Learned more in this 5 minutes than last year of "not asking questions"

Thanks Mountain Mike

[GLynn41]

Lyman says wd(water drop or precipitation hardness) makes the outside of the boolit harden differently than ac-- the dendrites i believe they called them are forced to crystallize suddenly and not gradually so they form a different structure -- with the passing of time the boolit can or will slowly soften some --normal shooting I rarely do it but higher speeds or like boar hunting I do rather than change the lead mix-- and as stated you must have antimony -- which why a cast soft point- or a dual alloy boolit (dab) will not harden the softer mix but will the harder one--IIRC

[44man]

Tin does so little for hardening it is a waste of money. Pure can NOT be hardened by any means. You need tin, antimony and a trace of arsenic. The amount of antimony will do more to change hardness then anything else.

[StarMetal]

Tin does so little for hardening it is a waste of money. Pure can NOT be hardened by any means. You need tin, antimony and a trace of arsenic. The amount of antimony will do more to change hardness then anything else.

Finally we agree on something Jim, tin. I rarely ever use it. I'm convinced too much leads to leading too.

[damron g]

"Tin will not harden your lead. "

What?


"tin. I rarely ever use it. I'm convinced too much leads to leading too"

In plain base and Schuetzen loads 10-1 to 16-1 is great.Too much above 1% and you make solder.Its just too expensive so i use WW with a bit of stereotype mostly.Harder than i need but cheap.

George

[HeavyMetal]

You have been given good info!

Tin is used to increase the ability of a lead alloy to flow into nooks and crannies of a mold cavity. To much nets you nothing and has never been able to harden boolits Except in the minds of gun writers with no clue!

2% tin, by weight, is all one should ever need for casting.

If you require harder boolits than clip on wheel weights are your answer! Clip ons will easily get you the BHN you need from dropping them hot frm the mold into water.

[felix]

"Tin will not harden your lead. "
True, when compared to antimony. ... felix

[damron g]

To much nets you nothing and has never been able to harden boolits Except in the minds of gun writers with no clue!

it's better to help the metal flow for sure but it does harden the alloy a bit .As little as .5% is good enough for metal flow go with antimony from there.

George

[geargnasher]

Damron, your'e right on with that. Anyone who says tin doesn't harden lead doesn't know what they[re talking about. 16:1 is about 11 bhn, and that's as hard as the binary will ever get. Pure lead is five or six.

Gear

[geargnasher]

Always used pure lead for my projects but heard about water hardening the bullet to increase hardness instead of adding tin. Adding tin will only get you to about 11 bhn and is expensive, and tends to lead at higher velocities in my experience. (I see Starmetal and I agree on this one!

Pure lead is about a bhn of about 5 to 7 can i jump this up to 10 or 12 with water hardening. Lead by itself cannot be made harder by heat treatment since it has no crystalline structure. You must add other things, mainly antimony in small amounts, to be able to heat treat it or harden it.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Mountain mike

Add clip-on wheel weights or other antimonial alloy to harden up your pure lead.

If you want the long answer, check out Lyman's cast bullet handbook, it explains alloys in great detail, including the chemistry behind the various "standard" alloys.

One more thing, and I think this gets missed a lot here, is that Arsenic doesn't really harden lead in trace amounts, but it sure speeds up the aging process when heat-treating antimonial lead alloys greatly. 1/4% in a 3% Sb lead alloy will reach max hardness in a few days when water-dropped whereas it might take two weeks without the Arsenic.

Gear

[RobS]

gear.........I guess you don't sleep either. I don't know where people are getting that tin doesn't harden lead either....it's common knowledge and found readily on the web or in reloading books........maybe they mean it doesn't harden it as much as let's say antimony or that lead/tin alloy will not harden if water quenched but to say it doesn't harden lead at all is a dead wrong statement.

[geargnasher]

Rob, I could go to bed if the misinformation stream would stop! Stupid OCD.........

Gear

[Shiloh]

Antimony in the alloy will water harden. Antimony and a trace amount of arsenic is even better.

Shiloh

[44man]

I will not retract, tin does little to harden---notice I said LITTLE. It DOES harden a LITTLE and to make lead harder takes a great deal of expensive tin. 16# of lead and a full pound of tin is what? about 6%?
Take a Brinnel reading on pure tin once and see just how soft it really is.
It takes 9% tin to reach 11.5 BHN with pure lead and it will not water harden. It will be a cold day when I add a pound of tin to 9# of lead!
That seems to be about the limit of hardness and adding more tin can actually make the lead softer.
If you shoot BPCR and use 30 to 1 or 20 to 1, you are only getting easier fill out, doing almost nothing to make the boolits harder. A point or two on the BHN scale is nothing at all.
Also notice I said PURE lead can NOT be hardened by any means, water drop it or stick it in the oven, I don't care but you can NOT harden pure lead. Only adding some tin will bring it up a little but adding antimony and tin is best.
Those that are quick to jump just do not read well!

[RobS]

44man: You don't need to retract anything as the statement was not directed at you......your statement is factually correct......not everyone is attacking you so take a breath and relax a bit.

The statement that caught my eye and another person who posted on this thread was by HeavyMetal:

2nd time quoting this:

To much nets you nothing and has never been able to harden boolits Except in the minds of gun writers with no clue!