MC....a search may find you the articles written by Charlie Dell. In his book he talks a lot about heat treating and /or tempering bullets afterwards. He did some pretty extensive research and testing for his match guns. You may also know someone handy with his book to lend you.'93,

Thanks for the tip but I've run out of searching patience.

My alloy in question is actually a combination of COWW and softer Pb alloys (stick-on WW metal and/or ballast, spent muzzle loader boolits, etc.) which still contains enough Sb to age harden from about BHN 12 just after casting to 16+ in several months. I don't know exactly what they added to clip-on wheel weight metal during the few years before removing them from the CA market (which is pretty much the time frame in which I collected most of my current alloy); however, my straight wheel weight metal heat treats to BHN 30! I remember back in the good old days, one could melt a boolit cast of WW metal in your moma's oven, but I've actually been able to heat treat my COWW at over 500F in my wife's new-fangled convection oven.

I'm just going to bake 'em at 450F tomorrow, test 'em Wednesday evening and report back. My guess is that they'll be right around BHN 13, two days after removing all the age hardening. At least that's what I'm hoping.

MJ

P.S. Come to actually think about it, I bet "they" stopped using any tin whatsoever in order to reduce cost... I'll bet that would increase the COWW melt temp.