What's with this......

[KYCaster]

.....love affair with heat treating????????

Considering some recent posts on the subject it seems to be getting a little out of hand. Every recent thread beginning with a question about alloys or casting technique ends with a bunch of recommendations to heat treat or water drop. The practice has become so common place that it's now considered by some to be SOP. A couple of days ago a newbee to the site asked if it's possible to cast WITHOUT water dropping...:groner: How in the world did we get to this point?

OK...I'll admit right up front that I've never, EVER, heat treated or water dropped a boolit. I just can't see the need for it in the loads that I shoot, and I strongly suspect that it's unnecessary for 99% of the shooting that the rest of you guys do.

Every year for the past twenty plus years, I have loaded many thousands of rounds for use in handguns from 650 to 1600+ fps. More recently I've begun to cast for rifles and commonly load those to 2000+ fps. I use three basic alloys for all these applications with the vast majority being cast from AIR COOLED WHEEL WEIGHTS....and I see no compelling reason to change.

I suppose you could argue that heat treating allows you to alter an inferior alloy so you can use it for a specific application, but I've found it fairly easy to duplicate the alloys that work for me rather than add three or four unnecessary steps to the casting process.

The biggest draw back that I can see to the process is the inconsistancy...yes, I understand the heat treating process and I know it's fairly easy to get repeatable results, but the same claim can't be made for water dropping. But that's not what I'm talking about. The hardness of your carefully heat treated boolits will ALWAYS CHANGE. Yeah, it could take a looooong time, but the fact is the change is inevitable and you have a particular time period in which your work has the desired effect. Earlier this year I came across some 35 Rem that were dated 1988, loaded for my son's first deer hunt. If they had been loaded with HT'd boolits, I would have had to disassemble a couple and check the hardness to see if they would still be suitable for the application. I'll admit, it's an unusual circumstance, but something I'll never have to worry about.

The way I look at it, my time is the most valuable asset I have and I don't want to spend it on unnecessary tasks with very little return. [smilie=b:

I know many of you disagree with me....don't take it personal....it would be a very boring world if everyone agreed on everything. Just stating my opinion.

Jerry

[ANeat]

I water drop because of limited bench space. I start getting a pile of hot bullets on the bench then I gotta do something with them before they start falling on the floor.

To me thats extra work

So I just drop them in a bucket of water with a collander in the bottom and cast away. I can get a lot more bullets in the bucket before I need to worry about doing anything with them.

Makes no difference to me what effect it has on the hardness.


I agree that everyone has to do their own thing, enjoy the process, however you do it.

[BruceB]

Amen to Jerry's comments.

My actual usage is about 90% straight WW alloy, with the remainder being pure-lead balls and some softer-alloy bullets for my Sharps'.

I confess that I tried oven heat-treating some years back, but quickly abandoned it as offering nothing for my purposes. These days, I use air-cooled bullets in handguns but do water-drop most rifle bullets AS A MATTER OF CONVENIENCE, not because they end up harder.

My criteria for an acceptable rifle bullet are more severe than for handgun bullets, and I get less damage by water-dropping them. They pass through a slit in a cloth draped into the bucket, and the landing speed on the bottom is pretty slow. Typically I cast a LOT of bullets of a single design at one sitting (a thousand or more) and thus the bullets may be in storage for a long time before being used.

This might lead to slightly-different hardnesses over the life of the batch due to the age-softening that apparently takes place. It doesn't bother me, and I've never tried to track the process. With a bunch of bullets on-hand, the option always exists to oven-treat some of them "if needed". It hasn't been "needed" yet.

The whole thing about hardening bullets. it seems to me, may well arise from the decades of advertising of commercial cast bullets, where "hard cast" is praised to the skies as a desirable thing. "It ain't necessarily so", just like that old song said.

[Ithaca1911]

I water drop everything I cast.

I damage less boolits that way.

and I don't have a big towel on my bench to catch boolits.

I'm pretty doggone picky about my boolits, I can drop about 800-1000/hr depending on outside temperature, and usually cull over half of them. running the mold and lead hot, with high tin percentage. I just like them perfect. I can't cast fast enough when I'm trying to dump and cool on a towel in my small casting area.

[dragonrider]

20 or 25 years ago I water dropped my first cast boolit because I did not want a hot boolit rolling around, I had no idea that it would do anything for hardness, I wanted it to cool off fast. I have water dropped every boolit I have cast since. I do it for convenience.

[RayinNH]

I'm with Jerry on this one. For handgun boolits I use either WW or range scrap air cooled. My velocities probably don't go above 2000 fps in the rifle loads and quite a bit lower in handgun. Higher velocity I understand the need for a harder boolit and autoloader firearms where the boolit gets shoved into the chamber. I might add that air cooled boolits are much easier to run through a sizer especially as the diameter goes up.

As long as we're confessing here, I don't own a hardness tester, lead thermometer or firearms chambered in 30-06 or 30-30. I feel better now :smile:...Ray:cbpour:

[jhrosier]

I water drop partly because my casting table is an old sewing machine table with very little room for boolits.
I don't mind that the boolits are a little harder than air cooled and they certainly aren't going to last long enough to age soften.
It is also nice to have nice cool boolits to handle.
I put the wet boolits on an old bath towel and rock them back an forth for a bit to dry them.

Jack

[yman]

I water dorp all my bullets also. I started with a box & a towel but got tired of the hot bullets piling up on my bench. So I changed to a 3gal bucket of water setting on a milk crate. This worked well for 400 or 500 bullets but now I will run about 1000 to 1500 at a time, so a nice 5gal bucket of water setting on the floor behind me & I pour & drop them in. Like the others I do it for convience more than trying to harden them. I can finsh up my casting, shut down my equipment, drink a soda, drain the water off & dry them on a bunch of old towls & store them away. It does seem like I have fewer damaged bullets than when I dropped them on a towel, & they do make that nice sizzle sound when they hit the water.

[KYCaster]

So......lemme see if I got this straight........you don't have enough room to drop the boolits onto a towel, but you do have enough room for a five gallon bucket of water????

You don't want to give the boolits enough time to cool so you can handle them comfortably, but you have time to pour off the water then dry the boolits on a towel?????

You don't want to damage your precious boolits by dropping them on a towel, but you cull HALF your water dropped boolits?????? When I throw out 10% I start looking for a problem.

I know I'm stompin' on some toes here, but some of your arguments don't hold water [smilie=l: Adding three or four steps to the casting process isn't "convenient".

If you said, "All I have is WW, but my '06 likes 22 BHN." I could understand that, but that's not what I'm hearin'.

Y'all got to come up with some better arguments before you convince me to HT.

Jerry

[jhrosier]

...Y'all got to come up with some better arguments before you convince me to HT.

Jerry

I'm voting for "that nice sizzle sound when they hit the water.":kidding:

Jack

[ANeat]

So......lemme see if I got this straight........you don't have enough room to drop the boolits onto a towel, but you do have enough room for a five gallon bucket of water????


Exactly, the bucket sits on the floor.

I guess I could put a towel on the floor:bigsmyl2:
http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/picture.php?albumid=152&pictureid=841

http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/picture.php?albumid=152&pictureid=842

http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/picture.php?albumid=152&pictureid=843

[RobS]

All right.............heat treating or water quenching bullets of course increases the hardness of a bullet and is common knowledge if you have been around casting for some time. First off for most applications it is just not necessary to do but can be done and has been done successfully by many people.

The other side of the fence: first bullet hardness is a two fold situation. One: hardness is direct relationship to the pressures a bullet is going to be under while being shot from a bore which is in many cases is a direct correlation to a bullets speed; Two: a hard bullet will further penetrate in a hunting experience such as large dangerous game aka a bear that thinks you would be on its nightly menu. This is important to understand as a harder metal alloy such as lino or monotype alloys while high tensile strength (hard) are brittle and will not be ductile enough to keep from shattering when hitting bone and is not a good situation for hunting.

Bullet hardness for me is simple.............Wheel Weights are cheap to free in some cases and I can use a plain base bullet for applications that would not be possible with softer alloys. I also hunt so having a bullet that is ductile when pushed to high velocities is a must. I have become very consistent with my abilities to repeat hardness by recording my oven's temperature settings and with that I can make a bullet to any hardness for just about any application.

Yes there is the age softening of the bullets, but I have had bullets lurking around for almost a year and after the first two weeks of their birth they haven't changed. My readings have concluded that the lowest BHN hardness a bullet will go to is around 20 over any time period. The only reason I have bullets lying around that are a year out is because I sold the firearm a while back and just recently found the box of bullets in the garage. If I haven't shot one of my cast bullets in over a year I probably never will and if I did find the scenario all I would have to do is simply re-heat treat them. Although, this would not work of course if a person had already loaded them up.

[cheese1566]

I water drop because of limited bench space. I start getting a pile of hot bullets on the bench then I gotta do something with them before they start falling on the floor.

To me thats extra work

So I just drop them in a bucket of water with a collander in the bottom and cast away. I can get a lot more bullets in the bucket before I need to worry about doing anything with them.

Makes no difference to me what effect it has on the hardness.


I agree that everyone has to do their own thing, enjoy the process, however you do it.

That why i do it too...I found it easier for me to drop in a water bucket than try to keep them from falling onto each other on a towel.
Nobody is right or wrong...do what works for you-this is enjoyment and fun-not work!!!

[cbrick]

Y'all got to come up with some better arguments before you convince me to HT. Jerry

I've read most of these posts and haven't noticed anyone trying to convince anyone else to HT their alloy, several posts suggesting not to HT. Most of the questions are geared towards "what if and how to".

I agree completely that for many purposes HT'ing is not only not needed but can be detrimental to the shooters goals. Bullet fit is far more important.

So . . . who is trying to convince you to HT? What do you suppose their motives are?

Rick

[leadman]

I have found that water dropped bullets are more useful FOR ME over a wider range of velocities.
I may use the same bullet in differernt firearms such as a J frame 38 Spl. or in my 356GNR. The velocities vary from 750fps to over 1,400fps with the same bullet.

A/C WW will work at 750fps, but not at 1,400 fps, while WD will work fine for me at 750 fps and 1,400 fps.

I may use 314299 in my 300 Whisper at 1,200fps or my 30-06 at 2,500fps. A/c works in the Whisper, not in the 30-06.

If I water drop I don't have to keep 2 batches of the same bullet on hand.

[KYCaster]

Nobody is right or wrong...do what works for you-this is enjoyment and fun-not work!!!



Now there's an argument I can understand!!! If it works, more power to ya!!!

....But don't try to tell me that it's better or faster or easier....I just don't buy it.

ANeat, I have a little end table about 24 in. square that doesn't take up much more room than a bucket. If I put it beside the stool I sit on while I cast it would be about the level of my elbow. It's larger than the area I drop my boolits on and I have no problems with damage when casting a thosand or so at a time. I don't have to worry about water near my casting area. I don't have to bend over to drop the boolits. I don't have to worry about dropping all six cavities at the same time or having to tap the hinge pin two or three times to get the boolits to drop. I don't think available space is a good argument.

RobS, everything you've said is true, but I do disagree with your conclusions. I have very limited experience using cast boolits on game, but I do know for a fact that a RCBS 200 RF cast of ACWW fired from a 35 Rem at 2050 fps will penetrate a white tail deer end to end...in the chest and out the rump. Exactly the same performance as a Hornady RN soft point jacketed bullet with an almost identical hit. I cast some 44's for a friend, a SSK 210 TC,(92-6-2 alloy) that he loaded for a SRH and took to Africa. Of the several trophies he took, three are in the record books, a greater kudu, a zebra and a blue wildebeast. The only boolit recovered was from the wildebeast. It hit in the rump, passed directly through the ball and socket hip joint and was found in front of the heart....more than four feet of penetration.

I agree that WW are cheap, but I don't agree that they need to be HT'd to be effective. I don't deny the fact that you can get consistant results with HT'd WW, but I do question the necessity of it, and as long as you understand that HT'd alloy will eventually return to the same hardness as the same alloy air cooled, and are willing to deal with that, then there's no problem.

Rick, I'm way past the point that I can be convinced to change my ways.!! :coffeecom I've just been surprised by some of the recent questions from new members who seem to have gotten the idea that there is some secret formula or magic incantation they need to learn before they can make good boolits. I'm a firm believer in the KISS principle and I think that the new guys should get comfortable with the basics before they're persueded to jump into advanced techniques that may or may not be of any benefit.

But, that's just my opinion.....worth exactly what you paid for it.

Jerry

[ANeat]

....But don't try to tell me that it's better or faster or easier....I just don't buy it.

ANeat, I have a little end table about 24 in. square that doesn't take up much more room than a bucket. If I put it beside the stool I sit on while I cast it would be about the level of my elbow. It's larger than the area I drop my boolits on and I have no problems with damage when casting a thosand or so at a time. I don't have to worry about water near my casting area. I don't have to bend over to drop the boolits. I don't have to worry about dropping all six cavities at the same time or having to tap the hinge pin two or three times to get the boolits to drop. I don't think available space is a good argument.



Jerry I stand while I cast, I dont need to bend over to drop the bullets in the bucket, Ive never had a problem with the water, its well contained and I dont worry about it.

I just went out and measured my casting area and it would fit on your 24" table.

Ive tried just piling them up but I run out of room fast so in the bucket they go, works better for me.

http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/picture.php?albumid=152&pictureid=1677

[Slow Elk 45/70]

Do what works for you for the way you use your boolits.........there is no "ONE" best way to fit all situations, have Fun

[RobS]

KYCaster:

While you have loaded for those who hunt you do not mention where you load cast bullets for a 454 Casull or of the like which have extreme pressures. This is where the challenge begins. Cast bullet potential comes down to understanding the effects of cartridge pressure placed on the bullet . A 44 mag with a 210 grain bullet will not even come close to the pressures generated by a 454 Casull, 460 S&W, 500 S&W etc and neither will your 35 rem load. The max SAAMI pressure for the 44 mag is 36,000 psi and your 35 rem max is even lower yet maxing out at 33,500 psi all of which are well under the 60,000 psi max for a 454 Casull. Reaching the high velocity loads of these high pressure cartridges, one must have a hard bullet to withstand the stresses being placed on the bullet. Why do you think all the jacketed bullet manufactures tell people not to use their bullets for a 45 auto application in a full tilt 454 Casull load..............simple, because the bullet can not take physical stress that the high pressures place on the bullet. Cast bullets are no different plain and simple.

You have limited experiences to hunting with cast bullets which is fine and no experience on what I described as Dangerous Game obviously, also fine but don't compare bambie, the deer shot from chest to rump to a human meat eating grizzle bear or a stampeding rhino or cape buffalo. Your friend who took his trophy PLAINS animals with his 44 mag also does not qualify as dangerous game animals either. Tell me how it is that all the big time handgunners who go to Africa will only shoot a big damn heat treated projectile or a copper solid when their life is on the line..............look this up it's out there on the web everywhere and I for one know that you can shoot and kill just about anything with a 22 rifle if your shot placement is right ...............................................now does this make it right, absolutely not and especially if your life depends on it. I will continue to use a hard cast bullet that I know will travel and keep moving through a thick skinned man eater or should I ever have the chance at a pissed off stampeding animal that weighs in at damn near 2 tons.

You do what you want as it sounds like you primarily punch holes in paper or occasionally hit up a thin skinned animal all of which will not require you to need a water quenched or heat treated bullet, NOT LIKE YOU WERE GOING TO ANYWAY. Much of my shooting doesn't require either of these two methods either, but I do actually know why and for what reasons a hard cast heat treated bullet is useful for and will utilized this method as an additional technique to my casting needs.


Regards,

Rob

[cbrick]

Rick, I'm way past the point that I can be convinced to change my ways.!! :coffeecom Jerry

I'm confused. :confused:

Who is trying to get you to change your ways?

Rick

[JSnover]

As long as we're confessing here, I don't own a hardness tester, lead thermometer or firearms chambered in 30-06 or 30-30. I feel better now :smile:...Ray:cbpour:

You know what they say; The first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem.:smile:

I water-drop for the same reason as you other guys. The bench gets too crowded. Plus I don't have to wait if I want to take a closer look at a boolit.
Heat-treating might give a more uniform hardness but I don't see enough of a 'problem' with mine to stick them in the oven.

[Lloyd Smale]

heres my take on it. I rarely do it. I prefer to alloy to get the hardness i need but it will come a day when lineotype is impossible to find and then i will surely water drop again. As to accuracy i wouldnt bet to much that there inferior. Hardness of a bullet is just another variable in what a gun likes or dislikes. You may find one gun that loves water dropped bullets and another that likes bullets alloyed to the same hardness. I used to preach the inconsistancy of hardness myself but have found in testing that if you let the bullets sit for a month there not different enough that a hardness tester will show it. What i dont like is that water dropped bullets are brittle. Ive seen them fracture even at handgun velocitys. When kelly brost owned cast perfomance bullets we had a bunch of his bullets at the linebaugh seminar and they were breaking in the penetration tests. I asked him why he water dropped and he said it was the only way with production that didnt damage bullets. One thing i learned is never use a swc waterdropped or an bullet with a sharp driving band on large game. the noses will shear off. So to sum it up i believe an alloyed bullet is better but i also believe in most cases a harder bullet is better. So when it comes down that all i have is ww left i will probably take up water dropping and experiment with mixing pure and ww and water dropping that to take some of the brittleness out. By the way im surpised that 44man hasnt responded to this post. Hes had some great luck with accuracy in his revolvers using water dropped bullets. He tends to prefer them to anything.

[RayinNH]

You know what they say; The first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem.:)

I agree, what I don't have at the moment is the loose pocket change to afford the needed therapy :)...Ray

[KYCaster]

Rob, I seem to have ruffled your feathers...sorry about that, that's not my intent.

I don't disagree with anything you've said. The fact remains that there are very few applications where HT is the only way, or even the most desirable way to achieve the desired results.

Of the people I know who load for the high pressure revolvers you mention, very few of their loads push the limits of the gun. The vast majority are "reduced" loads, most of them in the same pressure and velocity range as my 44 mag. At these levels the super hard boolits are not necessary, nor even desirable.

My point is that new casters, some of whom have very little understanding of the basic process are being advised to use what I consider advanced techniques, and some of them have been led to believe that these techniques are necessary for good results. Most of the people who water drop all of their castings do it for convenience and not because the results are superior to other methods.

If I ever plan a trip into big bear or cape buffalo territory I will most definitely reevaluate my equipment and methods, but for what I'm doing now, HT and WD are not necessary.

Jerry

Rick, that was supposed to be a joke...."Stand up, ah say, stand up boy, they're goin' right over yer head".

[lwknight]

KyCaster, I certainly can relate to your gripe. It sems that if a newcomer starts reading a few posts that they would get the idea that WD,ing is a necessity.
Same about questions regarding wrinkled boolits. It seems that 80% replies just assume that the cast is too cold and that the molds are cold which is usually the case but, not always.

I'm thinking of water dropping myself just to be able to throw hot boolits out of the mold and go faster. In which case I will cut my antimony content back to 3% and be careful not to allow the tin content to exceed the antimony percentage. This way I will not have to worry about age softening or other changes over time.

It will be cheaper in the long run to get semi hard casts from lower Sb content.

[Jayhem]

I may start water dropping for a little extra hardness but to me I enjoy air cooling because you get to see all the bullets you have cast. In one way this shows what you have accomplished that sitting and in another way you can see where your quality of casts improved or got worse to help you adjust your technique.

[yondering]

OK...I'll admit right up front that I've never, EVER, heat treated or water dropped a boolit. I just can't see the need for it in the loads that I shoot, and I strongly suspect that it's unnecessary for 99% of the shooting that the rest of you guys do.


So, if you've never tried it, how do you know it isn't better? :groner: I had a roommate once who always said he didn't like mexican food... until we got him to try it. Then he liked it.

I don't see what you're so worked up about; seems like you're the one trying to change people's ways. It is simply a display of ignorance when someone asks if they can cast without water dropping; but then, we are all ignorant about some things, and everybody's got to learn.

I often use water dropped or heat treated boolits in my 45 Colt (Ruger level loads) because it does give better accuracy. I have proven this for myself, and disagree with anyone who says there's no use for hard boolits. I've also found HT or WD boolits to be more accurate in some semi-auto loads.
I cast with WW and pure lead alloys only, because that's what I've got.

[runfiverun]

i use water dropping as another form of alloy manipulation.
if i use my 4/6 mix air cooled, i can get a bigger boolit the same hardness as my ww's and pure mixed and w dropped. just at a different diameter, i use the same mold in my 7.7,303 and with the softer alloy in my 30-30. yeah, the seating depth is different, but not having to size down the harder alloy is a big plus.
and just by switching alloys i gain another rifle without buying another mold.
it also allows me to keep different alloys in different pots, but be able to get a much broader range of sizes and hardness.
b.t.w. i have 4 different pots, two 40's one 20 and one 10 plus a couple of lyman 10 lb ladle pots.
sometimes it's just as efficient to fire up one 40 lber and set out another 40 lbs of alloy put the water pot on the stool and heat up the 30 cal mold the 31 mold for the argie and the mold for the 44.
water drop two of them and drop on the bench with the third.
you'd be amazed how your interest is held longer just by switching to another mold and how much longer you can cast with good rythmn when changing molds.
and the advantage of mixing alloys plus the hardness benefit is worth it,remember you can always re-temper the alloy also,change the nose softer or the whole boolit can be de-tempered with heat to a more consistent hardness allowing you to bring a couple of batches to the same hardness by oven treating and then de-tempering.
sometimes the technical is the fun part sometimes i just want a pile of boolits for shooting,waterdropping and heat treating and tempering gives me choices sometimes with just one single alloy or to improve either an unknown or inferior [what i got for cheap/free] alloy.

[Oldtimer]

I've been pouring boolits since about 1972. I've never tried to dropum in water, or cookum in the stove, mostly because I never heard of it until I started reading here. I dont know if there's a number big enough to describe the amount of boolits that I've flung out of pistols. Never shot a cast rifle boolit in my life, except a muzzle loader. Everything I shoot is reduced power for punching paper. Only problems I ever had was running of primers, powder, and lead. I may try the heat treating thing, just to see how it works. Just got to do what works best for that person. Bob

[Wireman134]

It's the latest rage, didn't you hear... LOL. I only do the water thing cause I'm cheap and a control freak,,, LOL.:twisted::twisted:

[Echo]

I intend to start HT'ing my rifle boolits to bring them up to strength for higher velocity experiments. We'll see what a casefull of 785, lightly compressed, will do with 150-190 grain GC boolits. Will probably only punch paper with them, but, Hey! This is fun, isn't it?

[Hickory]

Good thread.
I like seein' you guys tail twitch.

[cbrick]

I intend to start HT'ing my rifle boolits to bring them up to strength for higher velocity experiments.

Both "up to strength" and "higher velocity experiments" are relative terms. What is "up to strength"? What is "higher velocity"? What is up to strength for what velocity in what caliber, barrel length, boolit weight, powder burn rate, boolit fit and many, many more variables.

I shoot my 308 Winchester (26" barrel) with 180 gr GC (188 gr actual) @ 1900 fps using air cooled WW with 2% tin. No leading, amazing accuracy, no quenching or HT.

I HT my 357 match boolit to 18 BHN and shoot it @ 1550 fps with WW + 2% tin because testing (and a lot of it) has shown that's where the best accuracy is.

The point here is simply that while HT'ing is a valuable tool for the caster in many if not most applications it's just not needed. Try your current "strength" alloy in your rifle before going to extra steps that may or may not be benneficial or detrimental, the results may surprise you.

Rick

[HamGunner]

I guess my first experiment with oven treating was a long time ago. I placed my bullets on a large cookie sheet that had lube in it with holes cut out for the bullets to sit in. Heated in the oven till the lube melted a bit. Then I cooled em and cut the bullets out and sized em in my Lee punch through hand sizer. Had no clue if that done anything to the hardness. But it sure got them lubed.

I still air cool and just use harder alloy for rifle and higher pressure pistol loads. Have not used a Kake Cutter for a while.

[Jim]

Who needs soap operas when they only run once a day and in the day time at that? I got Cast Boolits 24/7/365! Man, this is great!