harding bullets

[milltownhunter]

i see in the rsbs manual that you can heat treat you bullets in a oven for one hour one guy at are local sporting good said it is quicker to mold you bullets and after they harden and are still hot drop them in a bucket of ice water will this work? that is how you put the temper back in steel

[dubber123]

If you are using wheelweights, and you cast hot and drop them right into water, you can get a very hard boolit, up into the high 20's on the Brinell scale. This isn't the most precise method, and high 20's is likely harder than ideal for most applications.

The oven treat deal works the same way, but you have a consistant temp for all of your boolits. You still quench them in water. 425 degrees is getting me about 18 BHN.

It takes anywhere form a couple days to a week or so to get all of the hardness using either method. it's not an instant process. Doing them in the oven, mine are fully hardened in 2-3 days.

If you have hard boolits and want them softer, just heat them to 425-450, and let them cool down on their own, don't quench them at all. This will take a hardened WW boolit back to about 11-12 BHN.

[grumpy one]

Water-dropping bullets whilst still hot from the mould will harden them, and is very widely practised. However there are questions about whether you can drop every bullet at the same temperature, since that would require not only a constant mould temperature, but a precisely constant time until the mould is opened and the bullet expelled from it. I've tried it and been unhappy with the extent of variation in hardness. For me, the resulting hardness varies all the way from air-cooled to a pretty robust heat treatment - all the way from 14 BHN to 25 BHN, for the same bullets in the same session.

[milltownhunter]

would different hardness change presure and accuracy?

[grumpy one]

would different hardness change presure and accuracy?

Sometimes it would and sometimes it wouldn't, and it might be difficult to determine in advance which would apply. There is probably a limited range of bullet hardness that is best in most cases, for a particular barrel, bullet size and powder charge.

[waksupi]

would different hardness change presure and accuracy?

Yes, it can. The one that taught me this, was the 6.5 Swede. While trying to push for more velocity, I kept trying harder bullets. One day, for no good reason, I tried air cooled bullets. The speed didn't increase, but accuracy did.

[runfiverun]

if you want consistency the way to go is air cool size heat treat let sit a month or more
then lube and shoot

[milltownhunter]

thanks very much