HT previously quenched boolits

[Coopaloop86]

Oh wise gatherers of galena, I need some advice. Also hopefully this is the right section. I have some previously cast, unsized 180gr HP silhouette boolits from straight COWW that I powdercoated and WQ with the intent of loading them into .308 for punching paper. I recently acquired a 16" 300blk that I'm itching to take out next weekend to smoke some wild hogs. Now my question is can/should I reheat these in the oven and allow to air cool or fire them as is? They will be pushed around 1800fps with a gas check at 100 yards or less and I am looking for maximum lethality as the area I hunt is not conducive to tracking. If you don't anchor them, they're most likely buzzard and coyote food. Before we get into the weeds, I understand shot placement is key but after the first round flies, the remainders are all but hip firing, so I want to dump as much energy as possible into the intended target.

[BK7saum]

ETA: i didnt catch the 1800 fps goal. All still applies though.

I would just use them as is. If you are loading supersonic, there isn't going to be much if any difference in the pressures the boolits see between 308 and 300 blk.

If subsonic, then yes, you can heat and let them air cool to soften.

If supersonic is your goal, if you soften them, they may not handle the velocities you are looking for.

Gas checked? i am guessing.

[versa-06]

Another "?" How long has it been since they were water dropped? Time softens them up quite a bit in 6-mo or so. I had some 50/50 that within a year they were dead soft to what they were before W/Q'd

[popper]

Nope, just shoot them. I assume it's a 1:8 twist and it needs the harder alloy at that fps. It's a hog, don't worry about expansion.

[Coopaloop86]

Its been at least 6 months since quenched, if not longer. I don't have a velocity goal, more so devastation on target. Sounds good, I will load them as is.

[waksupi]

Most silhouette bullets I know of are a poor design for hunting, you need a good big flat point. As far as heat treating, I found I can alter the hardness of bullets by heat treating at various temperatures to achieve a wide range of hardness.

[stubshaft]

Headshots = NO tracking!

[Coopaloop86]

We generally shoot 125gr SSTs out of .308s and they are explosive. Like if you hit any organ or bone, it’s going down. At least long enough to get a kill shot but I’m trying to get the guys onboard with cast boolits. Plus we shoot ALOT of hogs and ammo and them jacketed get expensive real fast when you’re shooting 100 rounds a week.

[megasupermagnum]

The problem I see is that to soften them you will have to get them up to 425-475 degrees F. I don't think under 400 is going to have any meaningful annealing effect on them. When oven heat treating you generally want to leave them in there about an hour to be certain they are up to temp. You can probably shorten that somewhat, but I don't think it is going to do anything good to your coating. I think you are going to destroy your coating, but you can try it on a few if you want.

It was mentioned that time softens them, however it is not 6 months. Age softening of quenched bullets takes years to make a big impact. TATV Canada has tested this on both quenched and air-cooled bullets. The quenched fully hardened in about a day, although they were quite hard immediately after casting. The air-cooled bullets slowly hardened over the course of 3 months. After a full year the hardness had barely changed on either of them. There is this myth that quenched bullets get hard then soften quickly until they are the same as air-cooled. For practical purposes this appears to be completely false. I've tested quenched bullets that were as much as 5 years old, and they are only down a few BHN, still double the hardness of air-cooled bullets. Not only that, quenched bullets over time remain more consistent in hardness than air-cooled. I'm not aware of any testing that has proven a quenched bullet will soften any meaningful amount in a timeframe that isn't absurd.

[Coopaloop86]

Forgive me for being ignorant, I’m trying to fully understand the process as I only know what I do and generally I get acceptable results. So after I cast my boolits I then powder coat at 400 for 20 minutes and immediately drop into ice water when I pull them out. Would this not be long enough to consider heat treating? Would running a full hour have negative impacts on my coating? I’m not trying to be lazy, the smart man learns from others mistakes.

[Txcowboy52]

Shoot them as they are !!

[megasupermagnum]

Forgive me for being ignorant, I’m trying to fully understand the process as I only know what I do and generally I get acceptable results. So after I cast my boolits I then powder coat at 400 for 20 minutes and immediately drop into ice water when I pull them out. Would this not be long enough to consider heat treating? Would running a full hour have negative impacts on my coating? I’m not trying to be lazy, the smart man learns from others mistakes.

400 probably isn't hot enough to make a meaningful difference.

[MT Gianni]

Super hard hollow points, untested in any medium, with the intent of showing to your buddies that this materiel will work for hogs? I would stick to jacketed this week and try your loads on 6 one gallon jugs. You should verify you get expansion rather than shearing off petals and that the penetration is adequate for you want.

[mnewcomb59]

Forgive me for being ignorant, I’m trying to fully understand the process as I only know what I do and generally I get acceptable results. So after I cast my boolits I then powder coat at 400 for 20 minutes and immediately drop into ice water when I pull them out. Would this not be long enough to consider heat treating? Would running a full hour have negative impacts on my coating? I’m not trying to be lazy, the smart man learns from others mistakes.

400 degrees for 30 minutes will increase 1-2 BHN with 1.5-2% antimony alloys. 415 for 30 minutes will increase 2-3 BHN with the same alloy. 400 degrees for 30 minutes will increase 2-3 BHN with wheel weights and 415 for 30 minutes will increase BHN by 3-4 for wheel weights.

I'm not sure if 20 minutes will give similar numbers, and I am pretty sure if you bake for an hour you will get more of an increase than 30 minutes bake time. I really like the 415 for 30 minutes with 2-2-96 because it air cools and expands down to 1300 fps, and water dropped it has controlled expansion and great penetration out to about 75 yards from my 357 rifle. I use water dropped for deer drives and woods hunting and air cooled if you can see far. The air cooled will mushroom out to 175 yards in the 357 rifle but expands too much and penetrates shallow up close. The water dropped will expand to about 55 caliber out to 75 yards, a wadcutter to 100, and no expansion past that.

I have tried baking 415 for an hour and the powder coat darkened and looked half burnt, so I only did that once.

[Tripplebeards]

I can remember the first and only time I went out hog hunting. Took four arrows (shooting 70 pounds) before I finally got a four blade Muzzy in between the rib cage on a huge hog. It kept running around looking like a porcupine with my expensive ACC arrows sticking out of its shoulder plates. Just go out and blast away and bust some bone with those hard boolits and make sure to post pics!!!

[Coopaloop86]

That’s one of the reasons we use 125 SSTs. They penetrate and absolutely explode. You won’t get an exit but as long as you hit above the hoof, they’re at least going to stumble. When you’ve got 20 hogs running circles around you, you just gotta find your lead and start skeet shooting. I’ve only hunted one time with cast and it was several years ago when I first started dabbling in casting. Somehow I dropped a 160lb sow from 100 yards with a Lee 155gr out of my SKS. That was an awesome feeling.

[popper]

I leave my PC bullets baking for an hour above 400F, then into ice water. The molecules move around at that temp to form a better crystalline structure that adds hardness and strength. Then immediate cold freezes the structure. Rate of atom movement in a solid is proportional to temp. Not much movement at room temp. Softening is very slow, likely years. The rate of cooling determines the molecular structure. As it cools, various CHANGING structures are formed. Rapid cooling forces the 'better' structures to remain. Converse is true.
I use Smokes red and black coating, longer time doesn't have an effect. Higher than 450F and the coating starts to split. HiTek didn't work well at long time and higher temp, got dark and rough texture that scraped off during sizing.

[Coopaloop86]

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

[megasupermagnum]

That’s one of the reasons we use 125 SSTs. They penetrate and absolutely explode. You won’t get an exit but as long as you hit above the hoof, they’re at least going to stumble. When you’ve got 20 hogs running circles around you, you just gotta find your lead and start skeet shooting. I’ve only hunted one time with cast and it was several years ago when I first started dabbling in casting. Somehow I dropped a 160lb sow from 100 yards with a Lee 155gr out of my SKS. That was an awesome feeling.

Any reason you don't use a shotgun?

[Coopaloop86]

The thought has crossed my mind but the main factor is that we generally shoot them under the feeder and I don't want to tear it up and on occasion you can get shots up to 150 yards. Plus I really enjoy trying new projectiles out. They're a nuisance to be eradicated so I don't feel bad if one gets away. Plus they're delicious and cheaper than ballistic gel.

[Good Cheer]

Around '82 when experimenting with making home grown bullets bases more resistance to plastic deformation and having softer noses, I'd stand them up using a steel pan in an electric oven, calibrating the setting of the oven to the point that slump* didn't occur. The steel had to be heavy duty enough to not jump around when water was added to the pan at the end of the heat treat and the pan had to be leveled for bath flow. The result was better tails and better noses. It was an interesting technique that yielded satisfactory results, but ultimately I opted for creating a cartridge design that was friendlier to cast rather than working around someone else's jacketed bullet mistakes.

*At the boolit base first due to heat transfer from the steel pan; dumped a lot of heat into the small area of the bullet base and the weight of the vertical bullets exerted most there.

[ElCheapo]

I'd shoot them as is. I shot my first deer with a cast bullet in my 30-30 Marlin a few years back. Bullet was a water quenched 311041 made of COWW's. It killed the deer but the 18 BHN hardness was too brittle for the 2200 fps velocity. It came apart and chunks of it were left in the meat. Next I tried powder coating the same bullet which yeilded a hardness of about 11 BHN. Two more deer fell to my 30-30 and these bullets held together and penetrated the whole way through the deer, which is exactly what I was looking for. Harder alloys work well with lower velocity, so if you're going to load to 1800+ fps you will probably do ok. However if you want to duplicate factory ballistics with accuracy you will need a nice smooth barrel and a softer, more ductile alloy that helps the bullet hold together. I shot one the year before last with a plainbased 311008 at the same hardness. Velocity of the 115 grain bullet was the same 2200 fps, and it penetrated both shoulders of a small buck and exited, putting him down on the spot.