aging boolits; do you size before or after?

[Green Frog]

Many times, my boolits age while buried in the berm at my local range Cast/size/load/shoot (da capo).

My sediments exactly!!

Froggie

[osteodoc08]

If I'm going to heat and treat using the oven and water quenching, I'll size and lube pretty soon after, because it just requires more effort after the fact.

With air cooled, I'll cast and size/lube when I get around to it.

[GhostHawk]

I take them out of the water, run them through the sizer to get their gas check (Lee push through) As soon as I shut off my lee pot I put a stainless steel bowl with lube on the lee pot to warm up. By the time I've got bullets sized and checked the lube is melted and I hand dip each bullet, then set it on a flat plastic lid. The next day or later the same day I size them again to remove excess lube. and lay them down in neat rows in a Tupperware container. Ready to be used when needed. Pretty little silver bullets with copper bottoms and red lube in the grooves.
They're so dang cute!

Then I push them down into a brass case above IMR 4895 powder and they become one part of lighting in a bottle! LOOK OUT!

[David2011]

Maybe it's just the alloy I use but it seems to get significantly harder to push the boolits through the Star if they sit around more than 4-5 days so I try to size pretty promptly after casting.

David

[williamwaco]

Some years back, I got real scientific and measured the hardness of cast bullets of various alloys at one week intervals to see how much they hardened and how long it took.

I found they did age harden, some only took 2 weeks to max out, others 3 weeks and one took 4 weeks, depending on the alloy. After that some alloys lost a little from their new hardness, but some did not and were very stable. The really big thing I learned is they didn't hardened enough to make any difference in my loading. A Bhn point or two one way or another is irrelevant for practical shooting. Like some other things that folks get fixated on, this is a non-issue.

I cast and put them away and size as needed. Hardness has nothing to do with this. It is just easier and who knows what size I will want them when the time comes to load. So, just do whatever you want to do, it will make no difference in anything other than irrelevant theory.

+1 on every word.

My rule is that if you can pick them up and hold them in your bare hand, they are "old enough" to size, lube, and shoot.

That said, I do not do that.

I store them "as cast" until I decide on a batch to load, Then I size and lube them.
Why? because I cast in large batches and I never know what I might want to load next month.

If I do size them, I size them to the largest size for the caliber so If I decide I want a smaller size, I can size them down.

Example, I might size a bunch of .358 124gr TCs at .358.
If I load them in a .38 Special they are ready to go but if I need them in my 9mm, I can just re size them to .356/.357.

Always keep as many options open as possible.

[tazman]

This is all great information.
I have found for my 9mm, when using range scrap which is 90% of my lead supply, that I need to wait at least 3 days to get my best accuracy. If I load and shoot sooner, I get some shear that significantly increases my group size.
If I wait there are no problems.