Any reason NOT to water quench?

[glaciers]

I tried WQ'ing a few times and gave up on it as a waste of time. For most of my shooting needs, COWW air cooled hardness is a-ok (.45 Colt and .45ACP, .22,.25,.30 rifle loads- 99% of said rifle loads are in the 1400-1900fps range.) Excellent accuracy and zero leading is quite an argument against the bother of water quenching, IMO. If I wish to chase high velocity rifle loads, I have an obscene amount of linotype and monotype gathering dust for creating alloys suitable for that. In truth, when I head north of 2000fps I reach for jacketed bullets anyway.

What he said ^^^^

[glaciers]

Dropping COWW into melted lead (bad idea, btw) is very different from dropping boolits into water. COWW can get water between the steel clip and the lead WW. It is hard to get rid of that water. Dropping cold (100° is still cold) WW into a substantial mass of 650° or hotter molten lead will turn that moisture into steam almost instantly. When you drop a boolit into water you're dropping a comparatively small mass of 450°-500° lead into a much greater mass of water. The small mass of hot lead can't heat the large mass of water enough to cause a steam explosion so they are two very different situations.

The best way is to put the WW into a cool pot and then turn the heat on. By the time the WW start melting the batch will be well above the boiling point of any trapped water so the WW are very dry by the time they start melting.

Yeah, now I just make COWW into ingots on a propane fired camp stove. Fill pan with weights, melt, pour ingots, start with new batch.

When you flux with sawdust, let the sawdust char to at least a toasted brown before stirring it into the melt. The moisture will be driven out of the sawdust and you won't get a warning or visit from the tinsel fairy. I felt some "bumping" once as I stirred sawdust into the melt and have let it toast before stirring ever since.

Only happened once, and had not stirred in yet, just something, somehow enough moisture got in to cause a problem.
Just pointing out any chance of water getting to the melt is to be avoided. When I used to water quench by dropping form the mold, I placed a towel on the bucket to soften the boolits from hitting hard and to keep all water in the bucket and not get any near the mold or pot.

[Lloyd Smale]

wish I had an obscene amount of type lead. Then I wouldn't worry about it either. I don't agree on ww cutting the mustard for 1900 fps loads. At least not if you want the best accuracy. Ive been fooling a lot with the black out this summer and loads with 130 rcbs spitzer gas checks at 2200 fps will double and triple group sizes in my two bo's if I go from lyno to ww. That is pc'd by the way. Aint my first rodeo. Ive been casting for over 30 years and have been doing it for handguns from the 25acp to the 500 Line. Rifles from the 32s to 458 mags. What ive found to be a good rule of thumb is anything over 1200 fps needs to be hard. As to leading you can do 1500 with a gas check (im talking conventional lube) but at or around 1300 accuracy starts falling off. When you get over 1500 its time for at least 18bhn and gas checks are about mandatory even with pc if you want accuracy. Crowd or go over 2000 and you need lyno or water dropped, gas checks and pc. Sure you can hit beer cans at 25 yards with about anything. But if you looking for sub 2moa groups at a 100 yards your not getting there with plain based bullets cast out of air cooled ww. I do agree if hunting big game is in the mix I don't fool much with high velocity cast. Personaly I think big game cast bullets begin at 30 cal and must be a flat point. Even they are marginal and real big game bullets have a 4 or 5 for the first number and don't need to be pushed much past 1200 fps and even at a 1000 fps will do a lot of killing. that said when I go out with my Black out or ar10 to blast up 500 rounds in a day I sure don't want to buy jacketed bullets because that would add at least a 100 bucks to that range trip and id still like to hit the target thank you. I used to think I had more linotype then id ever use. But I found that that is one thing I sure had wrong. Today its getting harder and harder to find and will just get harder yet in the future. Water dropped ww lets a guy use a cheaper alloy and get to the same place.

What he said ^^^^

[gnoahhh]

Nah. I rarely if ever cast anything much over 12-15 bhn and I shoot a lot of rifle stuff at velocities up to just shy of 2000 fps. I honestly cannot remember the last time I had a leading issue. I cast a bunch of .30 stuff recently out of an NOE mold that consistently returned MOA accuracy (with WW's) out of my M1903A1 USMC sniper clone. The alloys were straight lino and a mix of mono + lead, with a ladder test of powder charges made up of SR-4759 and 2400, and none of them came close to duplicating the accuracy of the WW bullets. (All in the 1600-2000fps range, as measured with a chronograph.) It served to strengthen my belief that we (or at least I) shouldn't hold too tight to intuitive wive's tales regarding the need for bullet hardness. Proper sizing and loading techniques, not to mention actual shooting techniques, hold far more importance in this man's world.

[Lloyd Smale]

now do the same test in 20 different guns and come back and tell me your new opinion. Aint my first rodeo. Been doing this for over 40 years. In about every type of gun ever made. I know an am friends with some of the best known handgun shooters and gun builders. All who share my opinion. Ive casted With about every alloy and casting technique devised by man. The old wives tales were more on the lines of guys claiming they could do anything with soft alloys. Mostly because they didn't have access to harder alloys, didn't know about techniques like water dropping and sure couldn't afford to by print lead that the print shops still needed to make news papers. I remember at the Linebaugh seminar one year when I was much younger. We were talking cast bullets and one guy there made the comment that hard bullets were no good. I thought he was going to be lynched. There were some pretty well know men in the handgun field there that day. Funny thing is I used a lowly 5.5 bisley 44 mag in the penetration test. Took 3rd place out of about 30 guns. Handguns as big as the Linebaugh max and 500 smith and rifles as bit as the 458 lott. Only two guns that beat me were a #1 in 458 mag shooting ww solids and a 475 Linebaugh shooting a 420. My gun was loaded with 340 lfngc cast out of straight linotype pushed to 1200 fps (hot load in that 5.5 inch gun) I then won the 44 mag class in the 800 yard buffalo shoot. It was a steel 3/4 sized buf at 800 yards. You had one shot to get your range and 5 for effect. I shot a 4 for 5. My buddy won the 45 colt 475 and 500 class. Not one bullet he shot was softer then 18bhn. Take your bubble gun bullets and put 45-50k of pressure behind them and turn them into little blobs of lead and maybe, MAYBE, on gun out of 2o will like that blob of lead. Usually because theres something wrong with it. Like I said before. As casters we chase jacketed performance. We look for our lead bullets to shoot as well as those expensive jacketed bullets do. Whats one thing jacketed bullets have in common? A HARD JACKET. A hard jacket so the bullet doesn't deform in the barrel and engages the rifling without stripping through it. If harder wasn't more accurate id bet the bench rest shooter would have given up on copper jacketed bullets YEARS ago.

[6bg6ga]

Anyone ever test hardness of their water quenched lead after a period of time? If my memory is still good I water quenched some bullets tested hardness and then went back 8 months later and found them not to be as hard as they were earlier.

[tankgunner59]

I water drop all my pills, mainly for quick handling. They all shoot just great with no leading at all. I take them to the gun room and spread them on one of the many retired dish towels from my wife, then dry them with another. But as a habit I don't PC any till the day after casting.

[DonH]

I figured dropping them out of the mold into a 5 gal. bucket of water on the floor behind me
would get me to the same place for the correct hardness.

It depends.
Water dropping will get you hardness, but not immediately as others have said. It is not as consistent as heat treating all bullets for the same time at the same temp. Can't be due variables but maybe "the same" enough for your purposes.
Years ago(30?) when I first read of heat treating bullets I was also into handgun deer hunting meaning 24-25 gr on 296 under plain base Keith bullets. So I experimented with water-cooling and the oven method all with COWW bullets. My first attempt wasin ~ 425° for 30 minutes (some recommended that) then quenched after aging I tested them with my new LBT hardness tester, supposedly bhn. I got a reading of 35 (!!!) from randomly picked samples. So , repeat the process, everything the same except for 15 minutes. This time I got 25. Water dropping netted 20-21 or about where linotype is supposed to be.
The benefit to oven heat treating is consistency and by varying time hardness can be tailored to suit a particular need.🙂