Spider Oven for Heat Treating

[HollowPoint]

This is a poor mans "Heat Treating Oven."

I just call it "Spider Oven" because it looks like a black spider
with a belly full of bullets.

I made this out of stuff I had lying around in order to test the performance of
harder alloys at higher velocities.

I've read some of the posts stating that you can buy a used oven for next
to nothing. I wanted one for nothing so I thought I'd try to make one myself.

I've included some pictures so you can see what I'm talking about.

As of this writing, I've only tired it out once. It works!

According to my hardness tester, the top tray gives me bullets of 28 BHN and the
lower tray has given me a BHN of 30.

For testing purposes, that's good enough for me.

My test bullets were cast from water dropped wheel weights with just a pinch of additional Antimony.

HollowPoint

[Charlie Sometimes]

Well, I never thought of that. :shock:

Not a bad idea, using the metal in the bottom of the pot to stabilize and verify the temp at the same time. :cool:
I don't know if that could be hard on the pot in the long term though. I guess it would depend on how often you use it in this fashion. :confused:

I don't use the bottom pour pots anymore, so this technique is out for me.
I strictly pressure ladle pour now, so last summer I picked up a toaster oven at the flea market for $5!
Works good for heat treating boolits, and annealing thin brass or copper sheet stock to punch gas checks out of, among other things.
Thanks for the brain stimulation! :cool:

[kelbro]

Slick!

[HollowPoint]

Thanks for the kind work gentlemen.

Since harder bullets appear to be working out well for me, I guess I'll be on the look out for a small cheap oven so I can do more than a handful at a time.

It never occurred to me that you could anneal brass and copper sheeting in one of these little ovens. I guess that's just another good reason for getting an oven. I've been working on a jig for making Rebated-Boat-Tail gas checks and one of the problems I've encountered is,f my copper sheeting being to hard to form easily.

I thought about annealing my copper but wasn't sure how to go about it. Annealing in an oven makes sense. Thanks for the heads up.

I have no idea what the long-term effects of using my melting pot as an oven would be. I cast maybe once a month. I try to make up all the bullets I think I'll need at that time so my casting sessions may last 3 hours or so.

Since my pot is already heated up with about an inch of molten metal still in the pot, I didn't think it would do much harm to let it stay hot for another hour before draining it completely and shutting it down for the day.

HollowPoint

[Shooter6br]

Nice. I had to read this thread "Spider oven "very catchy. I am against crueity to animals. PETA MEMBER.....People Eating Tasty Animals LOL

[HollowPoint]

I got a chance to cast a few more bullets yesterday morning so I thought I'd try to harden 60 more bullets after my casting session.

Everything was going as smoothly as my first time heat treating with this little Spider Oven until I realized that I'd left just a tiny-bit to much molten alloy in the bottom of my pot.

That slightest amount of contact between my oven-frame and the molten lead transmitted enough heat to completely melt all the bullets on my bottom tray and deform nearly all of the bullets on my top tray.

I designed this little Spider oven to be suspended in the very center of my melting pot while having NO contact with the pot or the alloy left at the bottom.

:oops:Kind of funny and embarrassing -in a frustrating sort of way- to wait a whole hour for the bullets to temper, then find out that the damn things have melted back into the alloy at the bottom.[smilie=b:

HollowPoint

[Frank]

HollowPoint:
Kind of funny and embarrassing -in a frustrating sort of way- to wait a whole hour for the bullets to temper, then find out that the damn things have melted back into the alloy at the bottom.

That's a pretty interesting contraption you have there. Looks like it would do douible duty at my place for some garden decorating :redneck:. You should try water dropping also. They'll be plenty hard. On a side note, I don't know why ovens are used, if it comes out of the mold into water what could be better?

[stubshaft]

NOW that's thinking outside the box!

Great idea.

[Greg]

HollowPoint

some of the things that I have learned along the way:

since I lean more to the slow learner direction,
each was learned in their own separate disasters.

not all alloys have the same slump temperature.

if gas checks are attached before oven heat treating,
they might be loose on the base.
sometimes they might just readily turn, other times they might depart in flight…
groups are consistently inconsistent, either way.

ovens elements may tend to extreme temperatures as they bring the oven up to the dial setting. Boolits just might slump, before the dinger thingy advises operator that it is up to ‘temp’

sadly, I think it’s some more that I could of learned…but, I already have forgotten them.

that Spider is slick…it does the job exactly as you designed it.