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Old November 17, 1999, 10:00 PM   #5
Randy Garrett
Senior Member
 
Join Date: November 2, 1999
Location: Chehalis, WA
Posts: 142
Paul,
Using a mesh basket is definitely better than placing them on a tray. The need to attempt oven tempering depends upon a number of things including the caloric characteristics of your blocks. We manage to achieve similar hardness without the added step of oven tempering, however we use extremely heavy cast-iron 6-cavity Hensley & Gibbs blocks which help considerably in efforts to maintain constant temperatures. Since you are using wheelweight metal, you may not need to add chilled shot as the wheelweight metal comes with arsenic already added. However, it sounds like you are getting good harness, hopefully without brittleness, so more power to you! We torture test our casting with a free-falling sledge hammer to test for brittleness. We find that our practices allow our bullets to be so battered as to assume the shape of a coin without shattering. Sometimes really hard bullets will shatter when stressed beyond their inherent hardness. You might want to give this a try. As to sizing and gas-checking prior to heat treatment, I just don't think that is necessary. Certainly it doesn't hurt anything, but you are then required to run your bullet through the sizer again to lube them, and that's getting to be a lot of extra work. Unless you are certain that this results in less barrel leading, you could forgo that step.
Best regards, Randy Garrett www.garrettcartridges.com
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