I have read several articles on the use of quinching cast wheel weight
bullets..Some very interesting..My question is how big or small of a
container do you use here? Not being a wise *** or anything in that
order,but doesn't the cahange in the water temp also change the
hardness of the bullet...I mean,suppose you have 2 gallons of water
and you start out at lets say 40 degrees and with each hot bullet the
water temp will increase...Slowly,I agree.But sometimes when I get
casting,I will do perhaps 200 bullets....Do you follow me here so far..

So by the time I get to the 200 bullet,that water temp has to have made
a major change.....Or am I all wet with my thinking?

Just something to think about,right......

I use a five gallon bucket. I put a folded cotton towel on the bottom, held down at the edges with a couple of ingots. The towel keeps heavier bullets from deforming if they're still a bit soft when they hit bottom. When I get enough bullets on the bottom that I'm concerned about them dinging each other, I fish 'em out.

I don't worry about the minor changes in water temp for my purposes. But, if you're trying to really maintain control of the process, you can float some ice in your quench water. As long as you still have some solid ice, your water temperature will be consistent. You can use a bit of wire mesh to keep the ice out of the way of dropped bullets.

Does quenching bullets as they are cast really make that much of a difference? The only reason I ask is because that wasn't something I remember my Dad doing, and I figure that with decades of casting experience, he must have tried it at least once, especially since wheel weights were his primary source of bullet lead.

one other thing for safety sakes put a piece of foam rubber on top of the water to drop your bullets on so not to make a splash that might end up in your moltant lead and keep your ingots out of the water bucket area so not to get wet Forest Punch

True, the thinking may be all wet. The real cooling of the cast droppings happens with the sizzle. Consider that the latent heat of vaporization is greater than the heat needed to raise the temp of the water a degree - you have to keep heating water at boiling point to get it to boil, it doesn't all vaporize at once when it get to the boiling point. The hot drop of alloy is cooled by a burst of steam (the sizzle), ice in the bucket doesn't change the temp of the steam and creating the steam takes more calories than raising the contacting water from from cold to cool to steam than from cool to steam. Any air bubbles with the bullet and the steam itself also act as a momentary insulating jacket. The real trick is to drop the bullets as hot as possible into the water, the change in temp from say 500 degrees F to say 212 (lower at my altitude) is more important to hardening than the change from 212 to 32 degrees F. Otherwise you could just boil the bullets and rinse in cold water like a hard boiled egg to harden them.
I only use a couple of gallons of cool water to quench 160-200 grain bullets and after a few hundred bullets the water is not appreciably different in temp. 400 grainers would make more of a difference. I oughtta use a thermometer next time.
I use a wide basin behind me (keeping my body between the splash and the pot) since I'd miss a smaller target.

So is it really necessary to have to quinch the bullets even if you are
going to be using the gas checks on them..I am not sure of any exact
muzzle velocity at this time..I am guessing maybe around 2000 to 2200
f.p.s is all...I will be making bullets for the 30.cal and maybe later if
all goes well,some in .22 cal..Thanks for the information...John

Bore condition, bullet fit and alignment, lube and load (pressures) etc. are also factors. Watch for leading and target results. Air cooled wheel weights may bump up for better fit on firing but even with gas checks 2200 fps is really pushing 'em. Might want to start under 1800 fps and work up then try the same bullet quenched if you limit out before you get what you are looking for or just to see what your rifle prefers. Have fun, be safe and good luck.

So is it really necessary to have to quinch the bullets even if you are going to be using the gas checks on them..I am not sure of any exact muzzle velocity at this time..I am guessing maybe around 2000 to 2200 f.p.s is all...I will be making bullets for the 30.cal and maybe later if all goes well,some in .22 cal..Thanks for the information...John
Thanks for this thread - I learn something new all the time because I'll get curious about something and then go out and do some reading.

I came across this article:

http://www.sixguns.com/crew/castbullet.htm

And there is a short paragraph that I think bears quoting:

"So, for routine sixgunning applications what do we want from our cast bullet alloy? In the 800-1000 fps range we should probably keep the alloy at a BHN of 12 or below. From 1000-1400 fps, 12 to 16 is a very useful range of hardness. For velocities of 1400 to 1700 fps, this window slides up to 14 to 20. Above 1700, linotype at a BHN of 22 is an excellent choice."

He further went on to say that by quenching he get's to an estimated hardness of 18, which combined with gas checks might do the trick at muzzle velocities at 2000+ fps.

This also explains why dad always had gas checks and linotype in the shop for cast bullet loads that exceeded muzzle velocities suitable for the softer, plain wheel weights castings, although I still can't recall ever seeing him quench bullets as he was casting.

Quenching wheelweight bullets as you are casting them does make a significant difference in their hardness. Quenching them as you cast does require some additional safety precautions, as you don't want any water to be caught in your mould cavities, or in any sprues that you may be putting back into the melt.
I use a 2 pound coffee can to quench my bullets, casting up to a 100 big .45 calibre rifle bullets at a session. I don't worry about the heating of the water as it is not a signifcant enough change to affect the quenching process. You will probably get more variance due to air cooling of the bullet (if you aren't consistent in your timing) before you drop it into the water.
I tie a clothe around the top of the can with the middle under water so that the bullet, when dropped, is immediately immersed in water. Using the clothe minimizes the splash. Once the bullet is cool I can push it to the bottom of the can or take it out and put it on the box on the bench.
Quenching made a significant difference in hardness, after they are allowed to harden for several day.

I have never water quenched or heat treated bullets. That said, harder ain't necessarily better.

Glen Fryxell and others have some good articles on the subject of heat treating at http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

I have never water quenched or heat treated bullets. That said, harder ain't necessarily better.

Glen Fryxell and others have some good articles on the subject of heat treating at http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm
But assuming that you did want harder bullets - quenching would be one way to go and would be less expensive for the caster who prefers to go on the cheap with wheel weights, but it would seem to me that you would get more consistent results by using a harder alloy.

Well I do have a small amount of lyno type,but once that is gone it's gone.

I suppose I could mix it about a 50 to 50 mix with the wheel weights and see what that
does,but I really hate to do that...

I just drop mine into a 5 gal bucket! Bang them out on table top and push them into the buck! I push mine to 1700 -1800 fps GC out of rifles! No leading! Some are not GC'd and still not leading!

IIRC, Ranch Dog drops his into an ice chest with water and ice mixed and he likes it for consistency. I use a 3 gallon bucket and change the water occasionally as he begins to heat up. Of course I have a sink about 8' away and the well water is COLD.

Dave:cool:

Heat treating cast bullets can be controversial, depending on who you read or talk to. Dixie does heat treat their slug/bullets and it does make a difference in penetration, etc. There is some valid question as the whether anything is gained in handguns though.
We cook our slug/bullets for one hour at 450 degrees and cool water quench. We then apply an Alox wash. This make a very hard slug/bullet,a little over 30 bhn, but one that is not brittle.
Of course, we do not want any expansion on the big bullets. Various test at the Linebaugh Seminar, including the Bone Box, shows that heat treated bullets do stand up to stress testing better.
I think it all depends on what you want out of your bullets....in many cases, it is not needed.
Regards, James

Dropping into water straight from a mold has a learning curve to get consistent results. I fixed thermocouples to a number of my molds awhile back to let them tell me the best moment to pour. I found with #2 alloy and wheel weights, owing to temperature gradients within the mold, the optimal temperature for pouring the bullets to get clean dimensional results was actually lower than I use in an oven to heat-soak for quenching. This means a bullet dropped from a mold properly heated for casting has a lower surface temperature than you need for highest quench hardness. That's why James gets BHN 30 using an oven, while a lot of directly quenched bullets are only at about 18-20.

Those highly hardened bullets will drop to about BHN 21 over time. Still pretty good hardness. I've never tracked a drop-quenched bullet that starts out lower to see if it holds hardness over time or not? I always shot them up too fast.

When I experimented with drop quenching, I used a metal bucket with rags on the bottom. I would stretch a layer of bed sheet rag over the top, like a drumhead, using a big rubber band to hold it in place. I cut slit into it about an inch apart. When I dropped a bullet on the slit cloth "drumhead", it fell through the slits into the water. This both slowed them down to reduce splash, and the cloth snaps back into position to catch splash on its way up. A number of people recommend just floating a sponge in the water and dropping the bullets onto its edge, so the sponge rolls over to let the bullet enter the water. I would think that makes the cooling too uneven to keep the bullets straight, but I haven't tried it.

A bullet falling through the water will drop past its own steam bubbles to keep cooling the surface rapidly. The thermal conductivity of lead and its alloys is not high enough to cool the core in that same time period, so you will have the simple specific heat of the core still warming your water. It isn't great. Without looking it up, I'll guess it's about a tenth that of water, or 0.1 cal./gram or so. So, if you drop your 26 gm (400 gr) bullets at about 200°C (392°F), into 7.6 liters (2 gallons) of water at 22°C (almost 72°F), even if you didn't count what the steam carries off the surface, you would still only heat the water 26×0.1×(200-22)/7600=0.061°C (0.11°F) per bullet. A hundred such bullets would only heat the water 11°F, to 83°F. Not enough to affect the quenching a lot.

As mentioned earlier, ice will help speed cooling for greater hardness. If you want a more dramatic temperature drop, you can use ice in brine, like when making ice cream, so the water gets colder without freezing. But then you'd have wash the salt off the bullets and be doubly sure it doesn't splash onto your mold or other equipment. Bother. If you want them harder, the oven quench system makes much more sense.