Question on pouring balls

[hortonstn]

Saw in a video where he dropped his new hot balls in a bucket of water
Does this serve any purpose other than cooling ?

[Hungry Horse]

Don’t do that!!!!!!! Even a tiny bit of water in your lead pot will blow hot lead everywhere.

Hungry Horse

[JPK]

Pure lead isn’t affected by dropping in water.

[Tim Ault]

If it’s pure it just cools it . If it’s an alloy with antimony/tin  in it water quenching will harden it

[Daryl]

The alloy needed for water hardening, is antimony/lead and just a tich of arsenic. The
inclusion of arsenic is absolutely necessary for hardening to take place.
Alloyed lead shot has enough arsenic, and so do the old style lead alloy wheel weights.
Bullets/balls cast in those, can be hardened to brinel 34, the same as dead soft copper.
Linotype metal is brinel 21, while monotype is brinel 24. High Speed babbet is 28, iirc.
Post hardening working of the hardened bullets(such as sizing,) softens them again.  If
sized and lubed immediately after hardening, they will remain hard.  It takes them up to
12 hours after quenching, to harden fully. Properly hardened just straight WW bullets can
be driven to excessively high velocities, if the lube is up to it.
Tin/lead mixes will not harden.  Tin detracts from the hardening process of the whole alloy.
Just in case you didn't know, but were curious.
Info from: "Jacketed Performance with Cast Bullets", by Veral Smith.

[hortonstn]

Thanks
I know a guy that was making fishing sinkers the lead had moisture it it when hot it exploded and burnt his shop down

I don't pour balls

[smylee grouch]

Kinda makes me wonder how you get moisture in lead I emptied a pot of wheel weight lead by not making sure the moisture was off the washed clips before they went into the mix. The instant steam caused the pot to give up it's contents. close call for me and a lesson learned for sure.

[WadePatton]

It appears that some who have replied here are confused as to what the OP said.

He didn't say anything about adding water to molten lead.  He was referring to the dropping of cast balls, hot from the mould, into water for "quenching" for the purpose of hardening the ball.  And as is pointed out, this works with proper alloys but not pure lead. 

I suppose one could splash water from the dropping back into his/her lead pot, and yes I agree that could be disastrous and is to be avoided at ALL costs. Perhaps that's what the others were concerned about.

If you need harder balls, the easiest way is to use good WW lead, being extremely careful to avoid any zinc weights which will ruin your pot.  Alloyed lead will not cast the same size as pure lead, I think it shrinks more but could be wrong on that. I do know it will be slightly lighter. But if you get it too hard  you may have trouble getting 'em down the pipe and/or they may not seal up as well as the pure lead/patch/lube combo that works perfectly in that bore.  Test and see. It's all tradeoffs.

[recurve]

I found my round balls are more uniform when dropped into a tall bucket of water (5ft way away from my lead pot ), I  fill the mold, count to 10,  knock off the extra/spur in a dry container,  then drop the new round balls into the 2 foot deep bucket filled with h2o.
I NEVER do I try to remelt the wet balls !
 I let them dry, then weigh on a reloading scale ,any overly light go in the melt next time bucket ,any over 3 grains heavier go in my plinking bag.
 Brad at Cabin Creek muzzle loading asked me how did I get such constant results( very uniformed diameter) and was suprised at my water method ,saying that makes sense (softer than a folded towel /slanted board)

[Daryl]

I use a tripled layer towel with denim covered and angled box for 'dropping the balls or bullet into after pouring and after the sprue has hardened. They do not dent
and the weights, ball to ball or bullet to bullet are closer than 3 grs. Maybe because I've been doing this since 1972? I don't now the answer to that.
Whether they dent or not, will not change the weight, so I fail to see how dropping them into water will make them "more consistent".  If you drop balls or
bullets out of a mould before they are solidified, they will 'slump', yes. I wait for them to solidify before dropping them out of the mold blocks.

Alloys cast larger than pure lead. Pure lead has the highest shrink ratio, Wade, thus cast smaller for a given size of mould.
The Marvedux container has chips of beeswax in it, for fluxing the melt.