I use WW to cast bulets for my .44 mag pistol. I'm pushing them with 19 grains of 2400 powder. I water quench them straight from the mould. My question is this. When you water quench does it only harden the surface of the bullet or the bullet all the way through? I ask this because I size and lube the bullets with a RCBS lube/sizer and was wondering if I am destroying the hardness of the bullets when I size them.

Hardens just the outside,sizing does soften the outer edge ,but still leaves the nose and base very hard,I dont think its possible to know exactly how much you loose when you size.

Water quenching hardens the whole bullet but much more so on the surface. Sizing does work soften the metal being swaged down to the depth of that sizing effect. You will find a hardened bullet comes out of a sizing die larger than a non treated bullet, often over .001" greater in width. The problem is sizing these hardened slugs much with conventional sizers as their not designed to handle that kind of work load if the sizing is much for than a .001" The Lee sizing dies work the best for this tough sizing.

Your bullets should be the diameter of the cylinder throats of your pistol. Just to enter with mild resistance is about perfect. If that diameter is 1-2 thousandths over the barrel diameter your accuracy should be good.

Ten Bears

Carroll, I'd ask why are you water quenching those bullets?

I water quench sometimes, but mostly for rifles. I can't recall ever having any trouble in pistols with my normal alloy of WW+2% tin. If I did run into leading or a big accuracy dropoff as I approached my top load, I would go to water quenching.

Even after sizing, water quenched bullets are a good bit harder than normally cast ones. That's a big help in some rifle loads, but I would not do it as a matter of routine for pistol.

You don't need to water quench for the .44.

I read in some gun rag that quinching hardens about .003 of the bullet exterior. If you size it less than that, you're ok. I quinch all rifle bullets and regularly push them at 2200 + fps and have no leading problems. I tried both quinched and non-quinched in .45 Colt and .44 magnum heavy loads and can't tell much difference. Non-quinched seem to shoot a little more accurately. Neither leaded much in the pistols. I shot some small deer, a couple of coyotes and one 150 lbs. hog (quinched)with both types of bullets. I can't tell you anything about expansion, because i've yet to recover a bullet. Both quinched and non-quinched bullets have shot clean through all animals thus far. If quinching pistol bullets make you feel better, I say go for it.

For those who think water quenching only surface hardens a bullet, may I suggest a little science experiment that you can easily do for yourself.

Take a towel dropped (air dropped) and a water dropped bullet from the very same batch and put them nose to nose in a common bench vise and slowly turn the handle to close the jaws. Notice which bullet simply pushes through the other one?

I think you will agree after doing this little test that water quenched bullets are affected quite a bit more than "just skin deep".

The antimony based chrystaline structure that forms inside the water quenched bullet has been likened to the use of steel re-bar inside concrete as far as how it strengthens the bullet structurally.

The "tougher/stronger column effect" is what makes the water dropped rifle bullets so desireable, not just the increased surface hardness.

Water dropped high velocity .44 magnum pistol bullets have been shot through medium sized pine trees with very little deformation seen in the bullets.

A water-dropped high velocity rifle bullet will smash through heavy bones and still penetrate much better than a softer air dropped slug that expands and sheds away half its mass just going through the bone.

Now, the flip side to this is if you are shooting a round nosed lead slug and want it to expand for you -- don't water drop it !!

Oldfeller

It hardens MORE than the surface, but sizing them afterward starts a softening process that will shortly result in abullet that is as soft as if it were not quenched at all! I use undersize moulds for heat treating, and lube by hand, OR size first, cook in the oven,. quench, then lube by hand if I want hard bullets to stay hard!!
Per Oldfeller: A water-dropped high velocity rifle bullet will smash through heavy bones and still penetrate much better than a softer air dropped slug that expands and sheds away half its mass just going through the bone.

Not only that, the hard alloy bullet will also out-penetrate a jacketed softnose, and closely equal a full-jacketed "solid"!!

[ 07-24-2003, 18:57: Message edited by: eldeguello ]

I think it was Ross Seyfried who wrote if you size your water-dropped bullets within an hour after quenching, they are much easier to run through the sizing die than waiting several hours or days when they have fully hardened.

Ben H

I found waiting an hour to size amounts to 90% or so of the hardening effect by water dropping or heat treating. Measure those sized bullets as they harden up, they'll start to show increasing larger diameters as the clock ticks.

Relative bullet hardness can be figured with a sizing die IF the untreated dia is known before sizing the treated slugs.

Ten Bears

I once took a water dropped bullet and tested it on my SAECO tester. I then filed off the nose until the dimple made by the tester was gone and tested again. The Hardness was the same. The dimple was much deepr than .003". This tell me that sizing will not remove any hardness from a tempered bullet.

Having said that, I see no reason to harden handgun bullets. Doing so it not needed. In fact you are more likely to have leading in revolvers with hardened bullets. The bases of such bullets won't upset to fill the cylinder throats without high pressure. Regular WW with a little tin is plenty hard enough and much more forgiving of a less than perfect fit.

I believe all the Cast Performace bullets are water dropped. If that helps anyone. I have cast several thousand .44 and .45 bullets and when they are water dropped they handle a lot better in the manufacturing process.

[ 08-21-2003, 20:16: Message edited by: JTD ]

Being one of the nuttier fringe amongst us (at least in some areas) I have adapted .44 pistol boolits for use in my .404 Jeffery rifle.

Using straight wheelweights, I water-drop the Lee 44-310 bullets right from the mould and store them unsized and unlubed. For whatever reason, these HARD .44s size quite easily down to .424", without seeming to put much strain on the ol' 450.

On the other hand, some of my rifle bullets, cast and dropped in exactly the same way, are very tough to size, to the point that for some purposes I DON'T water-drop them, but size them in the soft state and then oven-heat-treat 'em.

Just goes to show, "Never say never", I reckon.

Other posters are correct in saying that hardening isn't really needed for MOST handgun boolits. I do harden some autoloader bullets either due to the shallow rifling in some of the guns involved or the pressure level, where the hard bullets sometimes give better results. The 9mm Para is a prime example, at least in my guns. My numerous revolvers seem quite pleased with a diet of as-cast WW, and these run from the pedestrian-level .38 Special up to the full-power .41 and .44 Maggies.

Regards from BruceB (aka Bren Mk1)