Asking for opinions on using water to quench bullets right after casting, i.e. - dropping bullets directly from mould into container of water.

Thanks,

Asking for opinions on using water to quench bullets right after casting, i.e. - dropping bullets directly from mould into container of water.

Thanks,
Will work, but are a couple of things to note:
1. Water and molten lead are not a good combination...with water that close to the pot, must be very very carful of droplets.

2. Idea is that they all hit the water at about the same temperature to get about the same hardness. IF a bullet hangs in one cavity of the mold for a time and finnally releases, it will hit the water much cooler than the others. If one hangs up, it's better to drop it in a seperate pile.

3. Pad the bottom of the bucket.

When I quench I use a 3# coffee can with water as cold as I can keep it. I don't use a sponge on top or a pad in the bottom, and I don't have a problem with banged up boolits. That's just the way I do it. It's not right or wrong, just works for me. I'll sure agree about a boolit that hangs too long in the mould - drop it somewhere else and then recycle it back into the pot or something. It's also necessary to cast a few cycles before dropping in water to be sure everything is up to temp and you get a little sizzle as the boolits slide off into the water. When I quench I keep things as hot a possible. Good way to make hard boolits. sundog

Note that it will take several days for the quenched bullets to reach their peak hardness. Shoot them the next day and they might prove too soft; wait a week and try them again.

I drop my bullets straight from the mould into a 3.5gal pail, shorter version of your typical 5 gallon bucket, filled about half way with water. I keep this bucket to my left on the floor, far away from the lead pot. I typically put a hand towel in the bottom of it, but it is soon covered by bullets and I don't get deformation from the bullets landing on other bullets so I don't know that it is needed. The water in this bucket, even with 1000-1500 bullets (180-300gr) does not get hot, or even warm for that matter.

I use this technique on all handgun bullets, even if I don't need the additional hardness, it is a convenient place to put the bullets when casting large quantities at once.

Thanks to everyone for the opinions. Would anyone happen to know how much difference in actual hardness it makes, quenching vs not? And if it does, for how long...? I don't have a 'Hardness Tester'.

Thanks again - Good shooting!

batman, I can't give any exact numbers, I don't have a way to check the brinnell hardness either.
I water quench all my bullets, .45acp and .458 wm.
the acp bullets dug out of a fresh pine tree stump, actually shot the tree so many times a good windgust twisted the tree to a stump. these bullets look unfired except for the rifling marks. guestimate of hardness upper 20's, that is hard
Halfbreed

batman, I can't give any exact numbers, I don't have a way to check the brinnell hardness either.
I water quench all my bullets, .45acp and .458 wm.
the acp bullets dug out of a fresh pine tree stump, actually shot the tree so many times a good windgust twisted the tree to a stump. these bullets look unfired except for the rifling marks. guestimate of hardness upper 20's, that is hard
Halfbreed

Glue a sponge to the BOTTOM of the bucket.

Tie a cloth on the bucket, loosly, so that it mostly sags into the water. Cut a slit in the cloth.

Bullets hit the cloth underwater...roll to the slit...fall through to the sponge.

Greatly reduces the chance of splashing and treats the bullet's gently.

Batman, I just float a sponge on the surface of the water in a 5 gal. bucket. This slows the bullet down, and it just rolls off sponge, for a soft landing. By the time it hits bottom, it has hardened enough, not to deform. Different strokes ..........

I use a 5 gal bucket to my right, am right handed. By the time they hit the bottom they are as hard as they are going to be from the mould. It is far enough away to preclude splashes into the molten lead.

As far as hanging up in the mould, I would question wether we could measure or tell the difference in hardness on firing.

I use a 5 gal bucket to my right, am right handed. By the time they hit the bottom they are as hard as they are going to be from the mould. It is far enough away to preclude splashes into the molten lead.

As far as hanging up in the mould, I would question wether we could measure or tell the difference in hardness on firing.

May be right...i still use the "three second rule"...if the bullet won't relaes in 3 seconds, will drop it in a seperate (air colled) pile. Are still good useable bullets, but i don't use them for the same loads as the quenched versions. may be little differnce, but I need every little edge i can arrange to make u for all the things i can't arrange.

My water quenched #2 alloy bullets are 15 BHN and the unquenched ones are 12 BHN. Since all my bullets are gas checked I don't know that I'm getting much advantage by water quenching but I continue to do it anyway. My wife says I'm just a stubborn old fart and maybe this proves she's right!!

If I need cast bullets harder, I prefer to reheat a batch in the oven and quench them all at the same time. This ensures that they are all the same temperature and therefore should achieve same hardness. For MAXIMUM hardening the lead needs to be just barely below the temperature that it becomes fluid. I feel they are too far from that by the time they are dropped from the mold. I heated a few in the oven and kept raising the temperature till they started to slump and deform then lowered the temp just a bit. "Cook" them at this temperature for 30 minutes in a homemade wire basket with at flat bottom then right into a tub of water. I have no means to measure the BHN, but they are HARD.

By the time they hit the bottom they are as hard as they are going to be from the mould. If you say so. :rolleyes: If you are interested in the truth however, try this: take a bullet you quenched two weeks ago and a bullet that just hit the bottom of the bucket. Put them in a vice at right angles to each other forming an "X"so their shanks touch, then squeeze them in the vice. Open the vice. You may be surprised at what you see... ;)

Asking for opinions on using water to quench bullets right after casting, i.e. - dropping bullets directly from mould into container of water.

Thanks,

You can water quench your bullets but it is not a must. I let mine cool in the air every now and then I quench them in water. The bullets I hunt with I tend to quench in water. A lot of it has to do with the mood I am in at the time. I have air cooled bullets work just as well as quenched bullets killing targets.

Asking for opinions on using water to quench bullets right after casting, i.e. - dropping bullets directly from mould into container of water.

Thanks,
Seems I'm doin things a little different. I water quench the ingots into a five gallon bucket. Don't have to worry about bangin them around..from what I've read here and a couple other places, ww's (thats what I'm using) are around 8 to 10 brinnell, the bullets I cast from these ingots are right at 13.5 according to the Lee tester. I know there are different opinions on how well this thing works. I don't know either, I have no trouble reading the tester, just don't know how accurate it is. However it does give me a scale batch to batch and against some commercial bullets. Someone on this forum was going to check their readings against a known quanity, haven't seen the results. I tested it on D&J cast and they were a little over 18. If I remember correctly the Lazer Cast were a little harder. I haven't tried water quenching the bullets from water quenched ingots to see if they were harder or not, for my shooting the 13 to 14 is about right. The chart from Lee shows that hardness at a maximum between 16 and 17 thousand psi pressure and strength above 20,000. I don't exceed that (for the most part) in my 45 colts. I do have some loaded way beyond that but only shoot those when hunting. I use commercial bullets for those applications because even with this info, I don't know how accurate it is. I do know commercial bullets are harder than what I'm casting. Would be very interested in anyone elses results, ei; double quenching, lee hardness tester etc; Long post, my apoligies, Gus

In all likelihood a 240 gr. BHN 12 bullet clipping along at 1100-1200 fps will kill anything in the lower 48 if the placement is good.

I shoot almost exclusivly with straight WW's that are waterquenched....

I use a 5 gallon bucket with a foam pad on the bottom. Fill the bucket about 2/3s the way full and float several handfulls of styrofoam packing peanuts on top of the water to eliminate splashing. Works great and produces fantastic bullets.

Nobody has yet mentioned that sizing of water quenched boolits softens them again. If you use them unsized, they retain the surface hardness. I use QFM (quench from mould) for boolits that drop from the mould at near desired diameter, but if they require sizing, I use oven heat treating AFTER they have been sized.

If you say so. :rolleyes: If you are interested in the truth however, try this: take a bullet you quenched two weeks ago and a bullet that just hit the bottom of the bucket. Put them in a vice at right angles to each other forming an "X"so their shanks touch, then squeeze them in the vice. Open the vice. You may be surprised at what you see... ;)
To Carpe Diem: from Batman27409...R you saying that as the bullets 'age' they get harder, or the opposite? Also, have you had the opportuntity to actually test and see a pronounced difference in BHN for example?

Their are some tests that show they change hardness over time. I can't disagree with that. My statement that they are as hard as they are going to get referred to solidifying out of the mold. I think that unless we shoot them out of benchrest quality rifles under controlled conditions it would be difficult to detect a difference in hardness.

Bullets for hunting should be prepared as carefully as possible. But shooting a 45 Colt at steel plates won't show a difference in hardness.

The beauty of casting and shooting is that we can be as detailed as we like. We can obsess over .0005" diammeter or 1 BHN point and learn something in the process. Most of the time I just load them and shoot. I do have a Browning BPCR rifle that I detail myself to distraction over.

No flames intended.

I recently used some .44 caliber wheelweight cast boolits that I had heat treated about 20 years ago. I'd didn't use a hardness tester, but they were harder by thumbnail test than any linotype boolits I have lying around.

So, in reference to reheating in the oven and then quenching, would pan lubing at 225 or 250 have a drasticly negative effet on a bullet for hardness?

I have also heard that freezing the bullets will help to "condition harden" them.

Lead bullet alloys tend to get "softer" with age, from what I have read.

So, in reference to reheating in the oven and then quenching, would pan lubing at 225 or 250 have a drasticly negative effet on a bullet for hardness?

I have also heard that freezing the bullets will help to "condition harden" them.

Lead bullet alloys tend to get "softer" with age, from what I have read.

I've heard the same thing about age softening, that's why I posted the info about my old heat treated boolits.

In my opinion, heated lube would not affect treated boolits.

Generally the way it works is ww is anout 8-11 bhn, water quenched can take it to about 23-26 bhn. it takes several days for them to fully harden. Then over a period of some few months they will soften a very little, maybe a bhn or two. but not much. I am not going to test my bullets weekly, as they generally do not last that long. ;)
Halfbreed

Seems I'm doin things a little different. I water quench the ingots into a five gallon bucket. Don't have to worry about bangin them around..from what I've read here and a couple other places, ww's (thats what I'm using) are around 8 to 10 brinnell, the bullets I cast from these ingots are right at 13.5 according to the Lee tester.
Am I understanding you correctly, that you water quench the ingots when you cast the lead into ingots, then you later remelt the ingots and cast into bullets?
If that is what you are doing then when you remelt the ingots you lose any hardness gained from water quenching the ingots, as melting starts you back at square one.

If you can, test the hardness of your ingots, you should find they are harder then the bullets you later cast.
Try this test, cast a bullet test it for hardness, cast your ingots like you normally do and test them for hardness, remelt an ingot and cast a bullet, test it for hardness, you should find the both bullets are the same hardness, but the ingot is much harder than the bullets.

If your not going to water quench the bullets as you cast them you can save time and trouble by not quenching the ingots at all.


Michael Grace

Any reheating of the alloy, whether in ingot or boolit form, will resoften that alloy. If you're finding that quenching ingots and not the boolits results in harder boolits, there is something flawed in the testing.

It would be like tempering a piece of metal, then melting it and expecting it to stay the same hardness.

If you say so. :rolleyes: If you are interested in the truth however, try this: take a bullet you quenched two weeks ago and a bullet that just hit the bottom of the bucket. Put them in a vice at right angles to each other forming an "X"so their shanks touch, then squeeze them in the vice. Open the vice. You may be surprised at what you see... ;)


Hi Carpe Diem ! :)

I just registered into Shooters Forum.com 3/7/2006, and ran
across your above reply. I'm a little puzzled as to the exact
orientation of the two bullets in the vice. Are they side-by-side (both axis parallel) with shanks touching and bullet ends between the vice jaws ? This is the only way I can see you could apply equal squeeze/pressure to both bullets at the same time. I assume the objective is to
measure the difference in diameters after the squeeze. The
softer bullet would have the larger diameter of course.

Please advise..............thanks ! :D

ToddB64

I use a 5 gallon pail and fill it about 1/3 the way then dump about a gallon of ice and in my batch mixture, I mix 60 lbs of wheelweights 20 lbs of linotype and 3 bars of 50/50 bars - 1 lb each. What you want to do is to cool the lead as quickly as possible to bring the molecules closer together in a short period of time. The "longer" it takes for the bullets to solidify would mean that once it reaches a certain hardness, molecules can't contract once the metal is solid. Iced water will "shock" the molecules to contract faster. :cool: I found that aircooled boolits will get me around a BHN of 12, water quenched around 15 BHN and boolits quenched in iced water around 16 BHN. Here's another interesting observation, iced water with around 2 cups of table sale added to the cold mixture will give me a 17 BHN. Salt added to cold water will give you a colder mixture. This is the same as sprinkling salt over the ice when you make icecream in the icecream maker. Now in the case with table salt added, I rinse them thoroughly then resoak them in fresh water after my boolit casting session. To economize, I save my salt solution for the next session - after all boolit casters are good economizers. ;) All BHN readings were taken after leaving my boolits in water for two weeks.

Any reheating of the alloy, whether in ingot or boolit form, will resoften that alloy. If you're finding that quenching ingots and not the boolits results in harder boolits, there is something flawed in the testing.

It would be like tempering a piece of metal, then melting it and expecting it to stay the same hardness.

You're right!!!! Remelting ingots then casting boolits and letting them air cool WILL bring them back to its original state. I learned that back in my welding and metal shop class back in high school :cool:

Would someone straighten me out, my luck with dropping bullets in water has been very bad as they come out of the water as hard as glass but after they are run through a sizer mine come out soft as mud.
what am I doing wrong?

Nobody has yet mentioned that sizing of water quenched boolits softens them again. If you use them unsized, they retain the surface hardness. I use QFM (quench from mould) for boolits that drop from the mould at near desired diameter, but if they require sizing, I use oven heat treating AFTER they have been sized.

You must have missed this post.....

Most of that instant hardening, of straight WW's, is due to the high antimony content. Both my WDWW's and OHTWW's are pretty hard right after quenching. They both harded up a little more after a week or so. And yes sizing will work soften them.

Lately I've been mixing an alloy of 50% WW's and 50% Pb. Whether the bullets are WD or OHT'd, they take 2-5 days to harden. As long as I size them within 24 hours hardness is not effected. They are running 14 Bhn after quenching. When sized and left set for a few days they harden to 22 Bhn. I lube them in a die that's 0.001" oversize, so I can do that whenever. This 50/50 alloy is tough, yet will expand and hold its mushroom. You can play with the ration of WW's to PB to accomplish your needs.

Recently I've been playing around with annealing OHTWW's. WW's typically heat treat to a pretty high Bhn, from 26-31. I've been soaking them in the oven for 60 minutes, at a lower temp., then turning the oven off. They're removed when completely cold. So far I've got some data points at 18, 20, and 23 Bhn. Getting ready for a larger scale test soon.

I did a quick test of some of my non-heat "treated" bullets made from Magnum shot, 95/5 solder and pure lead. (DEVERS' Lyman #2)

They are as hard as Meister bullets using the testing tools I have at hand. They also appear MUCH harder than 20:1 I use for BP.

I have heard that Meister is right at 18 BHN. So, if I am getting over 15 for my 300gr GC 45lc bullets, I am doing just fine.

Well that for sure makes sense, remelting the lead would return it to original hardness....I hadn't even thought about that, guess thats why I like this forum, I have you guys to do that, the bullets I cast are mostly just for plinkin around, so all I was looking for was 12 to 15 bhn range. I bought the Lee tester just to ballpark what the wheelweights were throwing. However the bullets I tested were water dropped from the mould. The reason for dropping the ingots were simply to cool them quicker and the bucket was a good place to put them while I was makin more. Now that I think of it I have some air cooled bullets that I can check and compare with the water quenched ones. Thanks for the info, however I admit it makes me feel a half sandwich short of a full lunch for not seeing that myself.

The Lee hadrness tester tells you to file a flat on the side of the boolit before testing. If you do that to a heat treated boolit, you're not going to get an accurate test. The heat treating only hardens the surface, which you are filing away. A better way is to use a standard shell holder with the heat treated boolit nose up. Naturally, it has to be a flat point for this to work. If you are heat treating round nose boolits, cast a few SWC from the same batch of alloy just for the test.

Hello, I'm new here, but the one thing I noticed on this thread is that no one has mentioned the reason water dropping works is the arsonic in wheelwieghts. It's the arsonic that makes the antimony harden, and without it, very little is achieved by water dropping, either from the mold or the oven. It's also one of the reasons results can be less than repeatable from shooter to shooter, as wheelwieght content can vary from batch to batch, and maker to maker. DM

Yes, and the easiest source for arsenic is hardened shot.

454pb-

The thermal coeficient of lead is around 35... I think Aluminum is 230 or so. (so, Al conducts heat much FASTER than lead)

That means that in order to get a "deeper" or more consistent hardening, you have to have a colder quench.

But, the faster you can extract heat from the bullet, the 'deeper' the penetration is.

Poor temp control at either the heating or cooling processes will result in crap.

Another way is just to poor some lead onto a flat surface and then heat treat that. It should give you pretty close approximation.

The other thing to do is take one of the ingots you are casting with and just heat treat that and then work off its flat surfaces. (if it has any)

Bullets can be heat treated...

454pb-

The thermal coeficient of lead is around 35... I think Aluminum is 230 or so. (so, Al conducts heat much FASTER than lead)

That means that in order to get a "deeper" or more consistent hardening, you have to have a colder quench.

But, the faster you can extract heat from the bullet, the 'deeper' the penetration is.

Poor temp control at either the heating or cooling processes will result in crap.

Another way is just to poor some lead onto a flat surface and then heat treat that. It should give you pretty close approximation.

The other thing to do is take one of the ingots you are casting with and just heat treat that and then work off its flat surfaces. (if it has any)

Bullets can be heat treated...

OK, I know they can be heat treated, I've done a lot of that, but your suggested testing only tells you what that particular alloy is capable of attaining. Heat treating or quenching say a 500 grain 45/70 boolit and a 115 grain 9MM boolit from the same pot of alloy will produce different hardnesses because of the difference in the speed of cooling once they hit the water.The 9MM boolit will cool faster resulting in more surface hardness and more depth to that surface. In the case of an ingot, it would be less due to the mass, and if you did 10 at a time, the water temperature would increase dramatically and very quickly.

My point was that hardness testing has to be done to the surface that actually touches the rifling. If you file a boolit down to achive a flat surface, you are testing the softer area underneath.

For whoever was wondering about how well they're Lee hardness tester works heres a link to a comparitive test of the Lee,Saeco,Lbt,and the Cabin Tree.

Just scroll down till you see
Testing Cast Bullet BHN Tester's
http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

on the brinnell scale qunenching will add 3-7 points. I usually wait 7 to 30 days for max hardness.

Hey fellows... I've been casting a bunch lately and thought I would show you how I do mine. My alloy is 1/1, linotype to wheel weights and I cold water quinch it. A picture is worth....

http://home.awesomenet.net/~ranch-dog/Casting/040706_001.jpg

I use an ice chest filled with about 90% ice and 10% water with the level such that it is at the top of my basket. The basket keeps the ice out of the quenching area but things stay real cold! A towel is on the bottom of the basket and not shown is four sponges that float on top of the water. When the bullets hit the sponges, they flip slowing the bullet down and keeping the splashing to a minimum. Marshall here at BTB actually directed me on the setup.

Bottom line... the alloy cast 20 to 21 BHN air cooled and 30 to 31 quenched. I don't size right away but I'm using that special order Lee .432" sizer on a .432" bullet mainly to crimp on the gas check. After sizing today, still 30 BHN. It's a tough, treated alloy that has worked great on big game for me.

http://home.awesomenet.net/~ranch-dog/Casting/041106_003.jpg

This is a vise test today with a Beartooth. The BTB yielded to the alloy. Actually have to use a "cheater bar" to torque the vice down as they are both tough bullets!

Interesting thread. 454PB is most knowlegable on heat treating. The heat treating will only last about a year or so. Seems like a lot of work. In order to keep the heat treating you must size the bullet and go the oven route. Its possible to size the bullet with the mix and then use an oversize sizing die to lube but you will still scrape the bullet some. If your purpose is to reduce leading then changing powders and loads can help. I dont shoot that many heavy loads and just use a gas check.
The only purpose I can see to heat treat the bullet is to get soft point performance from a solid by treating just the nose. Just my .02.

I drop mine in a 5gal. bucket of water that I put an old pair of blue jeans in it for cushioning. As stated by Dusty...it does harden them a couple points or so on my tester. For pure lead like muzzleloading bullets I towel drop them.