Ambient temp and lead hardening

[nemesisenforcer]

Does the ambient temperature affect how cast boolits season? It gets COLD here (we had a month where it got 20-30 below zero at night every night) and I keep all my casting stuff in an unheated shed.

Will this make the lead harder or more brittle or does it not matter?

[Nocturnal Stumblebutt]

doesn't matter, plain and simple

[nemesisenforcer]

doesn't matter, plain and simple

Even if I leave the unloaded casted boolits in that temp?

[357maximum]

IT DOES MATTER..PLAIN AND SIMPLE

Temperature affects every chemical reaction....PERIOD

Say you waterdropped a batch of boolits that contain antimony/arsenic/tin/lead/copper....the boolits out in your shed will "mature" slower than if you brought them into your house. The warmer you keep your finished boolits from complicated alloys the faster they (harden/finish growing)are ready to shoot. Pure lead or pure lead with tin alloys are not affected the same way, but the alloys with more than just them two elements....IT DOES MATTER.

I keep all my complicated alloys as warm as possible for the first few months, and with the heating system in my house that is an easy task. It is also why I make as many of my complicated alloy boolits in the months that I heat this shack.

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

Along these lines, did I read somewhere that putting heat treated boollits back in the oven at a low temp will speed up the "curing" time?

[runfiverun]

it will help speed up the curing time initially.
just like keeping them cold will slow it down.

if you cast in cold temperatures and air cool it will have an affect similar to waterdropping.
not as immediate or as much.
it will however have a hardening affect.
it's the rapid cooling that makes them harder not the water.

[357maximum]

Along these lines, did I read somewhere that putting heat treated boollits back in the oven at a low temp will speed up the "curing" time?

I believe Felix quoted 200 degrees to be the magic number for that process. Mine set at a little ove half of that and it still works.


I actually have waterdropped boolits sitting in blocks of ice out in the barn in the bottom of their quenching buckets right now to prevent them from maturing as I am waiting on the proper sizing dies before I liberate them to size them.

[fecmech]

I proved to myself that it does matter a long time ago. I put water quenched bullets in the freezer over a week to make the sizing process easier when I could not size right after casting. I have also left ACWW bullets in the sun for a few days to age harden them more quickly before sizing and lubing. Temperature definitely affects the hardening process.