Fresh or Aged ?

[IcerUSA]

OK , been working on loads for the .223 and cast , lubed , and checked some fresh boolits this week , went to the range today to do some crony testing and try yet another boolit also .

My question is do you realy need to wait for the boolits to age ?

My groups with the loads I worked up had grown about and inch or so from the aged boolits I shot last week .

New to me boolit did shoot good with my start load and got bigger as the powder increased , might just have to wait a couple weeks to do some more testing .

Keith

[waco]

i have heard that boolits will harden some with time......but after long periods of time will start to soften some?
anyone else have an opinion?
waco

[35remington]

If they are air cooled wheelweights, they will simply get harder to their standard hardness, and remain that way.

If heat treated, they will take a short time to reach full hardness, then decline slowly in hardness after that. With most loads this is not a concern since we shoot shortly after treating.....at least I do. Shortly, in my case, is within about three months.

Some tests I've seen indicate that HTWW's will decrease in hardness, then stabilize over time. But that's with time periods longer than I'm familiar with. By the time this supposedly "happens" (hardness decrease, then stability with HTWW's) my bullets are long since shot up, so I don't have any personal evidence to indicate this stability after a hardness decrease.

For me, it takes a couple or three weeks for aircooled to get back to around BHN 12, so I suppose if your load was at a critical point regarding hardness and pressure a slightly softer bullet could affect results, assuming a 8 BHN bullet rather than a 12.

Possible, very possible. In some loads it may not make a difference. Maybe you have one that does, especially if you're on the edge without knowing it.

[Recluse]

If heat treated, they will take a short time to reach full hardness, then decline slowly in hardness after that. With most loads this is not a concern since we shoot shortly after treating.....at least I do. Shortly, in my case, is within about three months.

Same thing here--I only have a few boolits that will sit around, unloaded and unfired for longer than three or four months. Those boolits are in my .38 Special wadcutter and semi-wadcutter loads--low velocity rounds in which hardness simply isn't a concern.

I water quench everything I cast, without exception. And while it may seem redundant to some, I will occasionally heat-treat long gun boolits or boolits destined for high-velocity loads. With heat-treated boolits, I generally let them "age" for around ten to fourteen days before loading them. I date almost all ammo I load, so this also tells me when the boolits were cast, sized/lubed and loaded as well.

One thing I've found helpful is to size/lube as quickly as possible after casting. I water quench, and afterwards, pour the boolits into a big stainless steel collander I found at Walgreens for three bucks. I dump the boolits out onto a bath towel (old one) and blot dry them as much as possible/practical, then spread them out on a cookie sheet underneat the ceiling fan in the shop. On sunny or warm windy days, I'll sit them outside on the ledge. They're usually dry within a couple of hours and then they either get their first round of tumble lube--then back under the ceiling fan or outside on the ledge--or run through the lubesizer.

Seems to be easier to size them this way, plus it gives them time to "cure" before I load them up--usually a week and a half to two weeks later.

Works well for me.

:coffee:

[MT Gianni]

If there is a disadvantage to your same day shooting it is that you will have a different hardness in 2-3 weeks when you shoot them again. It could cause a variance in your groups.

[StarMetal]

I'd say it's more noticeable in rifle bullets. I had some bullets I cast from a new mould (which by the way went back to Lyman because they were way unsize from the mould) that I shot a few days from casting them and the groups were terrible. I attributed a good part of that to the bullets being unsized to begin with. For the heck of it I gave them another try after they set for well over a month. Fresh they wouldn't shoot anything tighter then 4 to 5 inch groups. A month later same bullets, same load, went into a 3/4 inch group. The rifle is scoped, part the reason for the small group. Now I'm waiting to get that mould back and hoping it cast larger to see what the load will do then.

It does make a difference to let them age.

Joe

[44man]

Water dropped or heat treated will also grow in diameter and fit the gun better. And harder takes the rifling better. One to three weeks is usually enough. They will not lose hardness for a long time. I have heard as much as two years but they will still shoot good.

[StarMetal]

Water dropped or heat treated will also grow in diameter and fit the gun better. And harder takes the rifling better. One to three weeks is usually enough. They will not lose hardness for a long time. I have heard as much as two years but they will still shoot good.

Mine only grew half a thousandth...still not enough. The mould was even way undersizer with pure lino type.

Joe

[IcerUSA]

Thanks guys , guess I'll give them a week or two to age a little .

The 2 boolits , the Bator and the Lyman 225438 both shot well with some boolits I had cast and where at least 6 weeks old but I had not checked their hardness . This batch I cast a few 45-70 slugs just to be able to test them , as cast the Lee tester gave me about 14.8 to 14.9 BHN , will check them again in about a week to see how much harder they get .

My mix is about 9 to 1 , WW/Lino , AC'd , so I figure they should get to at least 20-22 BHN when aged . Might be wrong tho .

Keith

[runfiverun]

seeing as how lino is only 21 or so by itself i doubt thinning it out :1 will make it that hard.

[Bret4207]

2 -3 weeks will make a difference of as much as 5-7 Bhn #. I had an alloy that when fresh indicated about 8 Bhn. I thought something was wrong with my tester. 3 weeks later they went 13 Bhn. With WQ it can be more.

[Char-Gar]

I don't worry about such things. I load and shoot from one batch and if they getter a little harder or softer, the next batch loads will still be peas in a pod with each other. If they are a little different from another batch of loads, that is just the way things goes.

[44man]

Mine only grew half a thousandth...still not enough. The mould was even way undersizer with pure lino type.

Joe
It depends on the caliber and alloy. My .476" boolits grow to .478". Smaller grows less, softer lead grows less.
Nothing worse then an under size mold, just too common with factory molds.
Your mold sounds large, I don't know what it is but can't explain why it grows so little.
I never used lino so I can't say if it expands more or less then other alloys. Just having a lot of antimony might not be right.
My alloy is 20# of WW's, 6.4 oz of tin and 9.6 oz of antimony. It ages to 30 BHN.
Straight WW metal does not grow as much and my water dropped only gets to 22 BHN tops.
We need a chart for every alloy and boolit diameter.

[felix]

The more the slush stage lengthens in terms of temp differential, the more expansion obtained over time when solid. Zero slush means zero meaningful expansion. Pure lino will not expand beyond nominal. If it expands, then we can assume the lino is not pure. ... felix

[1Shirt]

I am old and appreciate making it his far, and I think old cast is good as well particularly in rifle blts. I don't pay much attention to the age of my handgun blts, but most of them when loaded are probably someplace between 6 mo old, and possibly as far out as 3-4 years. Think ageing produces consistancy both in humans and in cast rifle blts. Just my opinion.
1Shirt!:coffee:

[testhop]

i usely cast up a 50 cal can at a tmeand have some that are 10 or more years old .
do you think i have to remealt and recast.
i have some loaded that has been loaded 20 years '
i like to load more than shooting.
what do you think junk it all and start over?