Hey all,
maybe this is in here somewhere but I have not come across it in my reading- at least not in any detail. I learned years back about differential heat treating when I got into forging (lot of fun, if you haven't tried you really should). Basically quenching only a part of your blade (or boolit) to have hardness where you need it and softness where it will be of most use. Typically you would aim to harden the edge and keep the spine soft through whatever method you wish. This has me thinking- who has applied this concept to cast boolits? seems there could be some great results by tuning your boolits to behave in a more exact and predictable way for the results you want. For example many go for very hard bullets- great for targets, but could be better for game if softer and these such things.
Ok, ok- I'll get to the point...
Has anyone experimented with this concept in different methods? Here's where my head is at for options:
1) Hard base to allow good grab at high velocities in rifles with soft tip for more of a mushrooming effect/energy dump at impact.
2) Soft base to allow better obturation/seal on firing with hard tip to enhance penetration and having almost a reverse mushroom effect where the tip swages back into the soft base on impact.
Anyone tinkered with such a concept? I'd love to hear what people have tried and how it worked out. I'm planning on trying a few options when I get everything set up for my first batch- water drop and draw back hardness on tip for a small batch, the opposite for another batch (base) and the third was thinking of trying to water drop them but very controlled so as to only get the tip/base in the quench. I'm likely overthinking this but there has to be a "perfect" balance where everything works "optimally" that would be more ideal (even if only marginally so) than trying to find a balance of hardness for the whole boolit where you nust either sacrifice the good shootability often associated with hard boolits for better energy transfer into the meat.