Now many claim that when you water drop your only actually hardening the outer layer of the bullet. How would having this pc coating on the outside effect the hardening of a bullet when water dropping out of an oven. Will it decrease the thickness of the heat treatment? Will it decrease the final hardness? Will the coating prevent the loss of hardness that happens when you size a bullet after water dropping it? Sorry for all the questions. My mind obsesses with things at times.
Lloyd, you need to amend your post to include this. Does water dropping permanently harden the bullets or is this just a temporary hardening effect that goes away with time. My cabine tree hardness tester seems to indicate that uncoated bullets will harden as a result of water dropping but this condition seems to lessen as the bullets age. Now, I may be mistaken but I would make the assumption that this condition would apply to coated bullets also. Like I said ..just my opinion and I haven't started doing any bullet coating as of yet.
I would have to think that any bullet water tempered would soften over time. ive seen it too in water dropped bullets. they seem to soften a bit but they will still stay harder then the same alloy non water dropped.
I'm going to do some experiments myself on the subject. So far I know water dropping will harden but you do loose a little over time. I would think that coating a bullet and exposing it to a low heat would not alter the water dropped hardness and that the coated bullets results would be the same as the uncoated water dropped bullets.
WD (quenching) for increasing hardness is not a surface effect. Hardening is a function of RATE of COOLING. Outside cools first BUT heat flows from the inside so cooling rate is almost equal all the way through. Both specific heat (amount) and heat conductivity (speed) of lead are quite high.
Sn/Pb will soften faster (months), Sb/Pb doesn't soften much over years.
Whatever!
if that's the case popper why then does sizing a bullet after water dropping it soften the driving bands that come in contact with the die. I'm no scientist. I don't know which side of this argument I'm on. I know a lot of guys here that are pretty knowlegable will tell you that you get much more hardness on the outside of a bullet then the middle.
I've done some testing in this area, and I found that the hardness extends into the boolit at least 1/3 of it's diameter (that's as deep as I filed), and it reduces very little over time. If you use them within 2 years or so, it's not even worth worrying about.
The softening caused by sizing can be eliminated by sizing the boolits as quickly as possible.....I size mine the same day.
You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore
What's the Arsenic content of your alloy?Originally Posted by Lloyd Smale
no idea lee. Most of my alloys are mixes I throw together to get the hardness I need and have about everything from range scrap to pure to monotype in them.
is that in a coated bullet. I just wonder if the coating protects the lead enough that it retards heat treatment. I would guess it still is happening but I wonder if its reduced.
The tests were done without powder coating, but I doubt it would make a difference. The only contributing factor would be that boolits dumped into water from a mould are hotter than those dumped from the powder coating baking procedure. Mine are at 400 degrees (checked with an oven thermometer) after baking, from the mould they're probably closer to 500 degrees.
You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore
If the bullet harden when quenched they must have some Arsenic in them.
And we know this how?
You need antimony to heat treat boolits, arsenic will speed and enhance the effects. See articles on it at the LASC site.
Correct it is the antimony that hardens and arsenic just makes things move along quicker. I have too water quenched WW alloy to create tougher boolits and what 454PB stated mirrors what I have experienced. Currently I've started up on Hi-Tek super coat (the recent powder form that is mixed with acetone or M.E.K.). I'm sold on this for handguns, both low pressure and magnum, but will need to see how it all goes in the rifle. When time permits I'm wanting to test Hi-Tek air cooled and then if the boolit doesn't withstand the launch and RPM's I'm going to try and quench these Hi-Tek critters from the oven and see if I can bring up the hardness of the boolit.
I have powder coated (tumble with airsoft BBs) and now Hi-Tek super coated and much prefer the Hi-Tek method as it is less tedious.
Lead alloys work soften so sizing will reduce surface hardness. If done soon afte r quench, surface will re-harden.
Whatever!
What I've found is that hardening begins after water quenching, but it takes some time. That's the reason that sizing quickly prevents softening.....it hasn't had enough time yet to harden. In general terms, the boolits reach full hardness in 2 to 3 weeks.
I still have some long term samples on my bench that are around 2 years old. I tested them at various intervals, for example 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, etc. This recent discussion may spur me to do some re-testing of these samples.
You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore
Good article.
Remember - - - your PC'd boolits out of your oven are, at best, 400F (and probably not all the way thru after only 10 min) when you WD them. That is about 200F or more cooler than when you drop them 4-6 seconds after casting in your mold. That ~200F difference in cold water will make a harder boolit.
I feel WD'ing out of a PC oven is a waste of time. PC takes care of all my shooting needs simply air cooled. And I mix all my alloys for the hardness I want air cooled, rather than guestimating a voodoo hardness with WD'ing. And then watching it change dramatically over time.
Unfortunately, there is very little scientific/lab/metallurgical data on water hardening of various Pb alloys - - - because industry just does not do it (reliability/repeatability??), unlike most ferrous and non-ferrous common industrial metals that have proven and published heat treat charts. Most info I have read has been generated by a very tiny niche group of people that melt and cast lead as just a hobby.
Oh.......that would be us!
Jim I have a bit different opinion then you but then do agree with your to a point. I'm not a big water dropper either. Never had to be because I had a good stash of hard lead and linotype. Well my linotype stash has become much smaller and I just cant alloy like I used to so I do use water dropping occasionaly now.
Now I have been coating my bullets in the oven for 20 minutes vs the recommended 10. So when and if I was to water drop the temps would be just fine. Actually water dropping out of an oven is much more consistant that dropping out of a mold. ALL THE BULLETS coming out of your oven are the exact same temp. That's not the case when you drop out of a mold. Now you might get SOME bullets that are harder dropped right out of a mold but anything over 25bhn isn't needed for anything.
Ive done 3 calibers now powder coating. For my Beowulf I had two ideas. One was a hp that would expand and they were done out of 1/3 ww 2/3 pure and air cooled. the other is a hard bullet to be shoot at high velocity and those were water dropped out of the oven. I also did some 9s and 40s. the 9s were for my ar15 at rifle velocitys so I water dropped them. More for accuracy then a worry the coating wouldn't prevent leading the same reason I did it for the beo. . the 40s were for my glock and I didn't see any use in water dropping those. Bottom line is if someone would be nice enough to come and drop a ton of linotype off at my door I probably wouldn't bother with it for a long time again I doubt that will ever happen so in some cases I do water drop
Last edited by Lloyd Smale; 04-29-2016 at 07:18 AM.
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