cooling boolits

[jasdebcr]

When casting boolits how do you cool your boolitts out of the mold? water, cutting oil, antifreeze????? what works the best?

[OeldeWolf]

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Simply letting them cool in air is perfectly fine for many applications.

Dropping into water (directly from the mould) can harden them some.

Alternatively, they can be oven hardened.

But be aware that soft (pure) lead bullets will not water drop or oven harden well.

Antifreeze droppping is used primarily for creating shot for shotguns. I understand it helps keep the shot spherical.

I do not know of any reason to oil drop lead. But maybe some of the more experienced casters here will have an answer for you on that one?

OeldeWolf

[mooman76]

Cooling in oil is suppose to harden metal better than water. Things such as a knife blade you want tempered. I don't really think it will help make lead any harder but that is just a guess.
By the way I ususally air cool mine, unless I want them harder then I water drop. Be advised if you water drop, yes it will harden them but after time(something like one year) they will return to their original state as if you just air cooled!

[jhrosier]

I water drop with good results.
I do this mainly to keep the boolits from getting dinged up.
I keep a layer of foam packing chunks (ghost poop) on top of the water to keep the splashing down.
It does significantly harden them also, about 50% harder when dropped and up to 100% harder by the next day.
Most of my guns don't seem to mind the extra hardness.
Since they are stone cold after casting, I can go right to the lube-sizer or tumble lube without waiting for them to cool off.
I have added a dollop of chlorine bleach to the water to keep it from getting nasty as I leave the bucket filled all the time and just scoop the boolits out when finished.
One of these days, I will get ambitious and make a screen basket to fit in the bottom of the bucket.

Jack

[DLCTEX]

The hardening effects of water dropping last far beyond a year. They may start to soften, but the process is a very slow one. DALE

[vanilla_gorilla]

When water dropping, do you leave them in for a day or so, or do you remove them right away and they continue to harden after removal?

[crabo]

It's the quench that does it. Pull 'em out when you are done casting and then go size them. If I understand correctly, if you wait until later to size them, you can wipe the hardning off when you size.

[copdills]

water drop:castmine:

[DLCTEX]

Take them out of the water immediately, nothing is gained by leaving them. If you wait to size them they will be much harder to size. I don't know if sizing a hard boolit softens it on the surface, but it is still much harder than air cooled. Boolits from 45 ACP and 38 Spec. do not deform at all when fired into a berm unless it hits a rock. DALE

[Fleataxi]

Dale: I'd at least wait until the boolits cooled! :eek:

copdills: Any time within 24 hours after casting should be fine.

CFI uses a tiny amount of the bullet lube LEE supplies with their sizing dies to pan lube the boolits before sizing. As far as I know, he's never had any problems sizing. That's all the lubrication the bullets get, and we've never had problems loading them in a Lee single-stage press, or shooting them later.