Hi , I was preping bullets for moly coating , I had washed them and dried them , But I wanted to be sure they were real dry so I put them in a pie pan and put them on the wood stove , which was closed down .... Well I got busy doing other things and forgot about the bullets .... When I remembered them , I looked and some of them had turned purple and red and other colors too ... I didn,t know what to do so I put them in a pan of warm water .... Then I dried them off ......... Are they ruined ... , some are Barnes TSX ???????

Mic. them in two or three turns to see if they are still round...if so...go with it.

How hot does that stove get...???

Mic'n them before loading is always a good idea whether you oven roast or BBQ your bullets...

I had the stove closed up so it wasn,t that hot.. Hot enough to have water in an open pan @ a medium boil ....????????????????I don,t know what temp it was ..

I,ve got them in the noise maker now ..3 or 4 hours in that thing should have them nice and round .... How can a bullet get out of round from heat ???

Nah, I'd shoot um. Heck, you may have even changed the temper a little and have better expansion. You should test um on some Alaskan game and report back. If they work good, let me know. Randy Brooks drops in the local shop now and then and I'll let k him know. maybe it'll catch on. Cheers!

Thanks .... They are all nice and shiny black now , so I can,t tell which is which ... I will check them for accuracy then for terminal performance ........

by chance, if you lay the bullets on there side and push them how do they role? Let melts somewhere around 700*F and if the lead inside was compromised it may be interesting how the will fly. all i can think of is a nice long barrel role. If possible.

They got hot,you can tell how hot by the color.I doubt it hurt them.I would bet a little time in a case tumbler would have removed it.

Hell if its only color I wouldn't worry about it. Good thing you didnt do that with cast bullets.

The discoloration is an copper oxide. You don't want any metal oxide sliding down your barrel. You can clean it off by ceramic tumbling or you can use a copper pad (like a brillo but copper) and CLR to remove it. If it isn't too bad, maybe an old toothbrush and CLR will get it. If it isn't really much at all, just dipping them in 50/50 water CLR will do.

I also doubt that you got the metal hot emough to anneal the copper but never EVER intentionally (or accidentally and unintentionally) fully anneal a grooved monolithic copper bullet. Been there, done that and if my suspicious mind hadn't steered to me to a much reduced load, I would have blown up the gun. It raised pressures 25,000+psi. Don't do it.

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The discoloration is an copper oxide. You don't want any metal oxide sliding down your barrel.

Does that mean we should not be shooting tarnished bullets? I just never thought of tarnish as being abrasive ....

I agree, unless there was something else on the bullet I thought all it did was just clog up the barrel just a wee bit more then normal.....

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I also doubt that you got the metal hot emough to anneal the copper but never EVER intentionally (or accidentally and unintentionally) fully anneal a grooved monolithic copper bullet. Been there, done that and if my suspicious mind hadn't steered to me to a much reduced load, I would have blown up the gun. It raised pressures 25,000+psi. Don't do it.

Can you please elaborate on that. I have fired annealed copper bullets, with no issues (not max load). I am wondering what effect the softer copper would have on pressure. What method did you use for pressure measurement?

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Can you please elaborate on that.

Yes, please do. I have been puzzling over this. How is an annealed copper bullet different to from a cast lead? Is it because of the bands? Does the softened copper, under high pressure, upset and grip the bore? Would a softened copper bullet be OK at moderate to low pressure as encountered in cast lead bullets? Would lubing that softened copper bullet make it behave like a normal lead bullet?

You see, I am planning on experimenting with cast copper/lead alloy bullets! (The lead is to lower the melting point).

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You see, I am planning on experimenting with cast copper/lead alloy bullets! (The lead is to lower the melting point).

That sounds really interesting, let me know how that works out. Maybe you can PM me and with little knowledge I have may help or more likely then not learn something.

What kind of melting point are you expecting to get. I know copper oxidizes at high temperature so it will be difficult to keep the bullets from scaling over (bronze sculptures need alot of cleaning and polishing after casting). Also the molds need to be steel to handle the high temps. I would like to see how that works out though.

I turn my bullets on a lathe from copper rod and have annealed some of them to improve expansion. I am very curious how that affects pressure.

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I turn my bullets on a lathe from copper rod

Wouldnt that be much more expensive in the long run then casting or swaging? Think of all the wast copper!? I could see how it works but, I m sure it hits the wallet hard.
I m not saying what your doing is wrong, hell if it works for you by all means do it. But I feel as if there would be too much wast.

Sorry for being late replying. I don't come here that often. I was playing with fully annealing land/groove pure copper solids just to see what the terminal result would be. Now I'm talking no shit fully furnace annealed, not just heated some, there's a big diference. I cut the powder charge WAY back from what I had used in firing the "normal" unannealed solids. On firing, the pressures were waaaay above what that load should have given and were treading close to the "blue pill" area. On retrival from the test medium, the lands and grooves had completely disappeared and the bullet had essentially turned into a cylinder. The fully annealed soft copper showed indications of severe galling and that was confirmed with one look down the barrel which was plated from one end to the other. The annealed bullet had "bumped up" just as a soft lead bullet would do. Once the land/groove structure (which is there to minimize surface contact) was eliminated, the drag of the soft copper was applied over the full length of the bullet. I was actually stupid enough to try it again with a bullet that I turned on a lathe so that the former bore rider section was .025" undersize. The exact same thing happened. The nose bumped up to full groove didameter and it was again a cylinder. This is one area you do not want to be screwing around with unless you have the right test equipment and even then are very, VERY careful.

Right. What seems to be happening is the soft copper is 'seizing' against the bore. The soft copper has little or no self-lubricating properties and bumps up to press against the bore walls, which results in binding which in turn raises the pressure, which exacerbates the situation. Thanks for the warning! This same mechanism could be causing pressure increases without velocity increase during load development.

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Originally posted by 303Guy:
Right. What seems to be happening is the soft copper is 'seizing' against the bore. The soft copper has little or no self-lubricating properties

Doesn't Barnes make their traditional solids from pure copper tubing?

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Doesn't Barnes make their traditional solids from pure copper tubing?

I thought they were cast or swaged, why would it need to be made/sawged with tubing?

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... I cut the powder charge WAY back from what I had used in firing the "normal" unannealed solids. On firing, the pressures were waaaay above what that load should have given ...
... The nose bumped up to full groove diameter and it was again a cylinder ...

Isn't that supposed to cause dangerous high pressure - detonation? It has been discussed on this and other forums and although it is warned against, it seems that no one has actually been able to replicate this effect in the lab. (Not that I could find out about anyway - which is not the same as hasn't been done). If this is the case then the annealing and lubricity of copper would have had nothing to do with the high pressure. Just a thought.

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I cut the powder charge WAY back from what I had used in firing the "normal" unannealed solids. On firing, the pressures were waaaay above what that load should have given and were treading close to the "blue pill" area.

What temperature were you annealing at. I used a 30 min @ 900F anneal in a stainless pouch to reduce oxidation. No additional fouling was noted and groups were 3/4" at 100yds from a .300 Wby mag Vanguard. Primers looked perfect with no cratering or flatness whatsoever. The load was mid range for the bullet weight.

I am very curious as to how you were meauring pressure, because I would like to be able to do the same. I was thinking of investing in a Pressure-trace system.

The bullet being turned into a cylinder sounds scary. Even annealed copper is much harder than lead so I am a bit confused about the effect. I know a lot of conventional bullet jackets are very soft without having this issue.

I was using an Oehler M43. Compared to previous exercises, the load should have given ~45,000psi. It gave 69,000psi and every other indicator agreed with it, including the velocity and most importantly my shoulder.

Your 900 for 30 minutes should do the trick. Copper annealing is more of a time/temperature relationship. The hotter you get, the less time you need. I was not as hot but it was in the furnace three times longer.

I'm not saying that every alloy, or even every bullet design, will give similar results but I did learn my lesson and won't go there again. The whole point of my comments was to just be careful.

If you choose to proceed, I highly recommend the Pressure Trace so you know where you are at.

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the load should have given ~45,000psi

Just wondering and this may not have much to do with the bullet. But what was the powder charge what caliber and bullet weight?

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I was using an Oehler M43.

Do you still have a record of that trace? How does it compare with the normal trace? Rate of pressure rise, position of peak pressure etc. Are you able to post the trace results?

(I find this thread extremely interesting!)

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Are you able to post the trace results?

Do you by chance have any photo's of the bullet(s) and what was the target you were shooting at? Example sand bank behind paper stand, wet news print, or ballistic jelly?

The cartridge was a 458 Win with a 450 grain solid. The load was not from a book but from earlier experience with the same bullet in the same rifle. The only difference was the anneal. This was over 7 years ago and data is not in the computer anymore. I should have kept the bullet but I didn't. It was fired into gel and then stopped against a steel back stop. Due to some expansion, it wan't too mangled on impact as the other hard solids are when they impact at a much faster speed.

All I'm saying is be careful, strange and unexpected things can and will happen.

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The only difference was the anneal. This was over 7 years ago and data is not in the computer anymore

Well, it was too much to hope for but thanks for informing us, NFMike. Do you perhaps remember anything about that trace that was different (other than the pressure)? It would have had a longer time duration far a start as you have stated that the impact damage was less than normal indicating lower velocity. Do you perhaps remember where in the bore the copper galling had occured?

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All I'm saying is be careful, strange and unexpected things can and will happen.

That's for sure! I would not have expected it.

No sir, I don't recall that the curve was radically different than others, or maybe I was just distracted (shocked) by size of the number and didn't notice the curve. The bore was fouled from end to end. It took two nights soaking in copper removing foam cleaner and considerable brush time to get it out.

I'll bet you were shocked!

Didn't you say that you were suspicious and so drastically reduced the load? Have you considered the possibility of 'reduced load detonation'? This is something I have only heard about but have not been able to find any 'proof'. But powder companies do warn about it so there must be something in it.

I don't suppose you could be persuaded to repeat the test?

I didn't think so!

The powder was H-4895 and that powder has never been known to be succeptable to SEE. Even the factory has no problems with reduced loads down to 60%.

And I'm just a naturally suspicious sort of guy. If you ever get pressure equipment, you will become suspicious also.

I agree

So that would rule out detonation. Well, I do appreciate your bringing to our attention the danger of copper annealing. What else is there we are not aware of? Makes one think!

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If you ever get pressure equipment, you will become suspicious also.

Well, I sure with I had pressure equipment on my hornet. Strange things happen. If I increase my load from one level to another, barrel heating ceases! When I say barrel heating I mean more heating than you would get from a 308. At the next load increment, the barrel stays cool. So where is all that energy going? (And how on earth did it get into the barrel so fast? Just today I was firing my 303 Brit with some five times the energy of the hornet and it took half a minute or so for the heat to reach the outside of the barrel!)

I found it takes a few rounds for anything to start worming up. Ofcorse where I live its below freezing at least 5 to 7 months of the year. So the worm barrel is welcomed!