How long to wait until sizing?

[smokemjoe]

I ran a test on different alloys with my Brinell tester that I made up. It has a 200 lb. die spring with a LED light, It takes 30 days for any alloy to get to full hardness. And after that there was no change in the hardness, It takes 4 days to any alloy to start to change, I wieght, sort, size and bump if for my 30 BRs all the same day or try and get them done with in 3 days, A few years ago I did the test and results in the Fouling Shot, Those silver painted WWs tested out the same as std. wheel wieghts, and shot the same, Hope this help,

[armoredman]

Thanks - hope i didn't kick over a hornets nest here.

[lwknight]

You will get a lot of opinions on stuff like that. An unbelieveable percentage of people just mix this and that and have no clue what the actual composition of the alloy really is and could not duplicate it if their life depended on it without wheelweights.

That probably sounds pretty snotty but, riddle me this: How can anyone attest to the properties of a given alloy if they don't really know exactly what they use themselves.

Its not a hornets nest, just an open discussion where everyone is welcome and happy to participate.

[armoredman]

And you are right, all I know about my metal is it is wheelweight. i do not have a hardness tester of any kind.

[chboats]

Iwknight - You are correct! But when someone offers to give me 2000 lb of lead that is a mixture of bars of sheet, range, and wheel weights with no makings, I am not going to turn them down. To make matters worse they have been out in the weather for 20 years. Tried testing hardness but the reading made no sense due to the heavy oxcide layer. I just live with it. It's a tough life living with all this free lead.

Carl

[lwknight]

There are factors that will trick you too. A friend gave me some old cast boolits that were turned green/grey fuzzy because of a near zero tin content and some that were bright and had probably 5% or more tin. Both were like 20 years old and the boolit with tin were softer than the ones with no tin.
Granted that tin only hardens pure lead slightly but its also temporary hardening too.
Also the boolits that had no tin were likely less than 1% antimony and were fairly hard.

Carl, I'm thinking that it was age more than the oxide layer that threw your hardness test off.

[splattersmith]

Anybody test (or notice) accuracy differences from soon or later sizing? I never thought about it but I don't recall any differences. Maybe I blamed a bad day on something else (any of thousands of things).

[excess650]

[QUOTE=smokemjoe;941879]I ran a test on different alloys with my Brinell tester that I made up. It has a 200 lb. die spring with a LED light, It takes 30 days for any alloy to get to full hardness. And after that there was no change in the hardness, It takes 4 days to any alloy to start to change]

Your results are contrary to mine. My water dropped bullets increased in hardness in as little as 12 hours, and seemed to be fully hard after less than 3 days.

Yours were air cooled, maybe?

[qajaq59]

Thanks - hope i didn't kick over a hornets nest here.

I wouldn't say so. All opinions are worthwhile, even if I don't happen to agree with them. And sometimes I figure out that mine were wrong, so I'm ahead of the game. You can't lose on that kind of a deal!

[Cloudpeak]

They grow in diameter slightly over time, sized or not.

Your post reminded me that I had some test samples of Lyman 452630 200 gr SWC bullets that I set aside for a "diameter test" Jan. 18, 2008 after reading about changes in bullet size over time on this forum.

I measured 7 bullets across the rear band after sizing in a Lee push thru die. I took measurements twice, rotating the bullets 90 degrees for another measurement. The bullets were wheel weight metal, air cooled. I just measured them again. The greatest change was .0005" on four bullets in the 14 measurements.