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Old November 20, 1999, 07:55 PM   #7
flatlander
Senior Member
 
Join Date: June 16, 1999
Posts: 120
I'd have to agree with protoolman on the uniformity of oven heat-treated bullets over the water-drop method, unless you have a fool-proof way of assuring the cast bullet drops out of the mould with NO hesitation upon opening the mould. Otherwise, if the castings sit in their cavities for varying lengths of time, there's no way the degree of hardness can be consistent, since the temperature of the metal when it's quenched determines the hardness it will reach. I set my oven using rejected bullets; when the temp is set high enough to begin to make the bullets slump, I back off just a bit and put a batch of good bullets into wire mesh baskets. After an hour in the oven, I quench the basketful in a large tub of water. If done correctly, you'll get hard bullets without smearing hot alloy with the sprue plate while trying to get the bullet dropped out while it's hot enough to benefit from being quenched. Obviously, I'm talking about individual users casting and heat-treating for their own use, not commercial casters using production methods.
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