water hardening-does it work ?

[greenwart]

The NRA cast bullets book had an article Stronger Bullets with less alloying. by Dennis Marshall. Excellent read if you can find it. I had a soft copy of it at one time but I can't put my hands on it at present. Goes into great detail of Temperature bake times for quenching and alloy composition.

[MT Gianni]

If he hasn't figured it out in 13 years it is probably too late.

[fredj338]

Of BLEEPING course, pure lead can be hardened!!! How do you think they make linotype or foundry type?

I got my lead smarts from a guy named Arthur Greene who used to have a type metal business in Beverly Hills, CA; Arthur is long gone. I can scan in and post his guidance sheets if anybody would care to see them, but they are rather elementary.

Tin does harden led a bit. Nothing like antimony does. Arthur tells me that pure antimony is a screaming ***** to get into lead; it requires extraordinarily high heat and specific fluxes. Most bullet casters use a lead alloy with lots of antimony (and usually some tin) in it to boost the antimony content of their melt.

Type metals in the 1990s when I started casting bullets were readily available as printers switched from the Guttenberg style presses to more modern offset and such methods. Type metals are a rare bird nowadays.

I've still over 150# of Foundry Type from Grene, which is 15% tin and 23% antimony. 1:9 range salvage to FT will get you 2% tin and 3% antimony added to your melt assuming one half percent each of tin and antimony in the range salvage. Pure lead will get you 1.5% tin and 2.3% antimony added to the melt. This composition casts like a dream @700F and is sufficient for anything short of a magnum load w/o lots of leading.

Arthur had two different Masters Degrees in metallurgy, so you can take what Arthur had to say to the freaking bank!

The original question was can lead be hardened by water dropping & the answer is no. You need antimony & a touch of arsenic for best water hardening.

[popper]

Pure lead cannot be hardened!!!!!!!!!!!!! Period!!!!!!!! It's an FCC structure.
Sb (2%), Sulphur and some other additives will harden the alloy.[ As speeds the process, might add slight hardening due to bonding, like tin. Water dropping 'freezes' the molecular action and around the liquidus line a lot of unstable compounds are formed. WD zips through that region so only good stable compounds are formed and they don't (due to molecule movement) de-stabilize as fast. It does take several years for BHN to reduce.