HT previously quenched boolits

[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.