Elec. skillet for heat treating?

[Charlie Two Tracks]

I have an old Sunbeam elec. skillet that I use for heating my moulds. I got the idea from a member here who posted a picture of it. The skillet works great for heating the molds. I also use it for melting my lube. One side of the skillet is cut out so that I can keep the molds flat to the heating surface. There is a 1/2 inch lip on that side now. I put small nails on the bottom of the skillet so the pan with lube can sit just above the aluminum surface and have water under it. Heat the water up and there you have it. Now I am wondering if I could use the same skillet to heat treat boolits. Put the bullets on the bare surface of the skillet, put the aluminum cover on and set it at 350 deg. What do you think? I'd have a 3-way casting tool.:coffee:

[Fire_stick]

Give it a try and let us know!

[MT Gianni]

One thing an oven does is maintain a level of air temperature retalivly even throughout the oven. I believe that you would have uneven temps with just an aluminum lid and no insulation and if you were able to reach the temps required to heat treat then the bases of your bullets would melt as they are nearer the heating surface. In an oven nothing ever sets on the bottom as it will burn.

[RobS]

I would think it would be hard on the boolits when you try to dump them in the water as they will bump into each other as they leave the pan and make way to the water. In a pan that can be thrown directly into a pail of water a person doesn't move the boolits when they are in a softer state i.e. at 350 or 400 or 450 degrees etc.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

Here is the experiment that I'm going to try. I elevate a pie pan about an eighth of an inch above the skillet. I heat the boolits the required time (whatever that is) and see what the results are. I am wondering if the bottom of the boolits will get harder and not the top? I don't quite understand the heat treating process so I don't know if it will work or not.

[patsher]

You know, it might work with the lid on after all -- and the reason I say that is that I have a friend who ALWAYS bakes her cakes in an electric skillet with the lid on. Works perfectly.

(When cool she frosts them, puts the lid on, and hauls them off to whatever event she is attending. I've known her for 35 years, and this is the way she's always done it. Says it saves her a ton of money -- costs a lot less to run that electric skillet than to heat up the oven on her stove!)

Yes, she's a little eccentric. But I love her that way!

(I guess I'm a little eccentric, too. I've got 7 different calibers of brass sitting around our living room, and around 3000 more rounds to be decapped while we watch TV) And then passivated, and then spread out to dry on those sheets lying in the corner --- let's see-- is it eccentric? Or addicted? Or..... oh, dear! Or -- oh, well. Who cares? It's OUR house!

Anyway, Charlie Two Tracks, I like the electric skillet idea for heating molds -- they keep falling off my hot plate.

[MT Gianni]

http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/Classics/Arsenic%20and%20heat%20treating.pdf

This might get you started. I recommend Veral Smiths book, Jacket Performance with Cast Bullets for a great understanding of heat treating an alloy, oven quenching and how hardness differs from water dropping and how to soften an alloy. For all of my rifle shooting from 244-458 I get better groups from air cooled WW. YMMV.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

Thanks MT Gianni for the link. The test is on. I have a pie pan elevated in the skillet and set the temperature at 420 degrees. It will "cook" for an hour and then I will water quench them by lowering the pan into some very cold water. I have a thermometer ready and when the time comes near, I will record the water temperature. I plan on putting some snow in with the water to lower the temp. I'll make sure that it is dissolved before putting the boolits in. The boolits measure at 13.4 BHN right now and were cast last Monday morning making them just a little over 9 days old. There are 230 boolits (Lee .358 RNFP sized to .3585 and weighing an average of 161 grains in the pie pan.

[Mustangpalmer1911]

Cant hurt to try ... if ya mess them up melt them and start over.

[Ohio Rusty]

I have one I was going to use also. But for mine, I bought a new small non-stick skillet to put inside the electric skillet. I was going to use this set up for pan lubing a larger quantity of boolits (more than 20 at a time.) The electric skillet should work for heat treating as it will get up to 400 degrees I think.
Ohio Rusty ><>

[Charlie Two Tracks]

this one will get up to 420 degrees. I will see in a couple of days what has happened. I think that it just may work.

[nanuk]

CTT: if you have trouble getting heat up, get some rockwool (Roxul Brand) insulation and wrap the skillet, and use a piiece overtop for a lid.

I wonder if you could slide a thermometer in there amongst the boolits to get a baseline temp setting?

[Plinkster]

Yeah one of those cheap digital thermometers with the probe would be ideal. I like this idea since my wife seems to object to the idea of baking lead. I am waiting anxiously to see how your boolits turn out with this.

[Hastings]

I like this idea since my wife seems to object to the idea of baking lead.

Mine too! :confused:

I mean what could be more natural than baking a few thousand boolits in the oven. I just don't get it!

[Charlie Two Tracks]

I will test one tonight after work. That will be 48 hrs and see if there has been a difference. It will take a couple of weeks for the final score.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

Do you ever hate it when you do something stupid? I came home and tested the boolits. There was no difference at all. I figured that the skillet method just didn't work. Then I realized that the boolits I used for the test were from a mixed alloy of Isotope, Range lead and just a little bit of WW. Next to nothing for antimony.................... Darn. Tomorrow I will try with a known WW alloy of boolits that I have. To be continued.....................
EDIT: continue it is. I just put some straight WW boolits in the skillet. I am just looking for a change in BHN. The WW test at 10.3

[Charlie Two Tracks]

I don't know if I should keep updating this post or not. I guess it don't hurt anything.
I went out this morning at tested a boolit. It was 14.3 BHN. Something happened. I will test in a week and see if there is more hardening.

[Iron Mike Golf]

Yes, please update this thread as you go. This could be real useful.

[bigted]

two tracks...please do continue your reporting...im very interested in your results. thanks

[Charlie Two Tracks]

I will let you guys know what happens this weekend. All I'm looking for now is a change in BHN. The problem may be that it will not be the same BHN every time.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

It's been 12 days. I tested three different boolits. The BHN was: 20.1, 14.3 and 15.4
The electric skilledt will harden the boolits but not on a consistent basis. (at least on my test). The skillet has a heating element that does not heat the bottom of the skillet evenly. The boolits (I believe) are being heated to different temperatures and thus, different BHN. So, in this experiment, it works but it don't work. A convection oven will give you a constant temmperature over all of the boolits. I was hoping that I could harden the bottom of the boolit and leave the upper half at a lower BHN. That would make for a good hunting round. Maybe if I put them just over the heating element or just inside of the circle created by the heating element I can get a more consistent result. (I will be looking at yard sales for a convection oven)

[RobS]

A convection oven if it is a cheap one can even have hot spots and is why I placed a 8 or 10 layer thick aluminum foil base shield the width and length of the lowest rack of my convection oven. This is done to keep the heat more evenly dispersed. The next rack up then has my pan of boolits.