Water-Quench BHN's of Common Mixes?

[Bigslug]

The "WHY" is going to have to wait for it's own thread later on, but my next .45ACP experiment is going to require harder slugs than the air cooled Lyman #2 I've been using. I'm presently trying to figure out the most efficient way to do this.

The "pantry" currently contains pure, #2, wheelweight, lino, tin, smelted birdshot, and range scrap with a very high percentage of shotgun slugs.

The process is going to be simple water drop from the mold - I'm not terribly interested in firing up the oven for the full-on samurai sword heat treatment.

A certain degree of shelf-stable hardness is desirable. When I load .45, it's usually in big batches. If this experiment pans out, age hardening won't be much of a problem, but age softening I'll want to keep to a minimum.

If the mold behaves as expected, I'll only be sizing down half a thou or so.

So please, kindly tell me of your mad science!

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

The end result will vary with not only your casting technique, primarily how hot you run the mold ...ie: if you cast so the boolits are frosty (hot) or if your boolits are shiney (cooler) ...As well as the water temperature. Keep in mind that if you use a small size bucket and cast large quantities of boolits, the water will get warmer and then BHN will vary accordingly.

That is generally why I chose to heat treat in a toaster oven, so I could get the best consistency batch to batch.

[runfiverun]

also the large amount of tin in the #2 will affect the final hardness. [a lot]
water dropping works best on antimonial surfaces.
your plain ol ww alloy with some soft thrown in [3-1] and <1% tin, will yield a bhn harder than lino-type if you use cold water.

[Mugs]

FWIW- I've water dropped all my boolits for the last 20+ years. I did it so i didn't have to wait for them to age harden. 4-1 WW & lino. 725-750 temp. tap water. .22 thru .357 rifle & handgun. If the BHN varied much i was never able to see it on the target.

Mugs