Water quenching/ what an I doing wrong?

[DonHowe]

Dropping from mold to water has not produce the best accuracy, when compared to oven heat treated for me.

Shot 100 of each for score. Oven scored higher, better accuracy.

The bullet that sticks in the mold, delayed drop, is* not getting hardened.

Dropping from mold to water is not and cannot be as accurate a heat treat method as using an oven.

The oven method means all bullets in a batch are heated for exactly the same amount of time and all quenched at once. When using the drop method the variable is the time between filling the mold and bullets hitting the water. Dropping is convenient and serves most purposes satisfactorily.

I think I am a pretty good caster but a scale does not lie (weighing bullets). A method I adopted to help my consistency is to begin counting when the mold is filled and until the hardened sprue is cut. After a few pours I get the rhythm and cut the sprue at the same count every time. When Dropping bullets into water Itry to be as consistent in motion as I can be to minimize variance in time. As I see it the more cavities a mold has the more variance in time from cavity-fill to water simply because of the time it takes to fill all the cavities. That is why I prefer 1 and 2 cavity molds. I don't need to fire hundreds of rounds per range session either for what that's worth.
On the subject of misinformation or not, I am not the most experienced person on this site but more often of late I read things which lead me to believe that some posts are reposts/rehashed of things read or heard rather than knowledge obtained from actually having done what is posted. Sometimes it is better to just sit out a discussion. I know that from experiencealso!

[Gohon]

When you are ready to lubricate, install a Lyman (450) sizing die .001" larger than the one used to initially size them, OR Tumble lube with Alox. This will prevent the sides of the bullets from work-softening from contact with the sizing die.

Okay...if this is correct then doesn't the trip down the barrel which radically resizes the bullet also surface softens the the bullet?

[243winxb]

Okay...if this is correct then doesn't the trip down the barrel which radically resizes the bullet also surface softens the the bullet?

Lyman info. Good point. The one test showed bullet hardness is thru the whole bullet. Not just the surface. https://www.freepatentsonline.com/5464487.html

From link I posted -

At least 25 of the samples which were heated for 5 and/or 10 minutes and then quenched as described above also were sectioned, ground, polished and hardness tested both at the surface and the core. These tests revealed that the hardness was essentially uniform throughout.

My pistol bullets are sized to groove diameter or + .0005" to .001" larger.

Lyman- sizing a bullet down more then .003" may hurt accuracy. This is in the lube sizer.