|
If you try to oven heat treat your already lubricated bullets, you might want to send your better half on vacation first, as the smoke and odor will be very considerable. If you are heat treating by placing your bullets in an oven, you are working too hard and probably achieving less hardening than desired due to significant variations in the temperature of your oven. Remember it is the temperature of the bullets at the moment they hit the water that will determine the effectiveness of the treatment. And thermostats function over a broader range of temperatures than is optimum for heat treatment, unless your thermostat is very good and you only pull the bullets from the oven at the moment the thermostat turns the power off (as a result of achieving the temperature setting).
Of course this assumes that you are using an arsenic enriched alloy with proper hardening characteristics. The simplest and most reliable manner of heat treatment involves dropping your bullets directly into water from hot blocks. Also, this tends to decrease the problems associated with a bunch of hot and, consequently, soft bullets bumping into each other as they do when dumped from a tray. Hardening by heating in an oven is just not the way to go.
This is how we do it in production, and our bullets run 25-Brinnell without brittleness.
[This message has been edited by Randy Garrett (edited November 14, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by Randy Garrett (edited November 14, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by Randy Garrett (edited November 14, 1999).]
|