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salvadore

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I occasionally quench pistol bullets depending on stuff. Last night I heat treated some sized bullets for a 32 special @ 450 for an hour before quenching.
Since I am hardness testerless does anyone have a ballpark brinnell for something like this (wheel weights mostly). Also I plan on using these in moderate loads for my 94 Win., maybe 1600 to 1800. Pressures will probably be higher than with plain wheel weight metal, is this going to be a major increase or not? Thanks you.
 
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You can expect (assuming proper procedures and a willing alloy), as a rule of thumb, a hardness increase in the neighborhood of a factor of three. Your BHN 9 wheel weights may yield heat treated bullets of around BHN 27 or 28. You may be going overboard on your bullets for your intended application. The Lyman quasi-standard casting Alloy #2 has a BHN of 11. Linotype has a BHN of 22 and some consider it on the hard side for moderate loads.

Some home casters report getting their wheel weight based heat treated bullets BHNs in the mid-30s. Of course, home hardness testers are subject to variations in the application and evaluation of the dimple.
 
Thanks Zippy, I used Lino when I was casting for .223 rem and it worked well. This was just an experiment, attaching a gascheck on the hardened bullets was much more difficult than applying to nonheat treated bullets. Anyway, thanks for the info.
 
I would first try (if you haven't already) using air colled WWs for this application. I run air cooled WW GC bullets in my 454 Casull (T/C encore) at over 2200 fps with no problems. YMMV.
 
Thanks ICH, I have tried this bullet and one other in wheel weights and both seem to work quite well altho I will try loading the hardened one out a little more..This was just an experiment, I have never oven treated bullets before.
 
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