Heat treating in "my oven"

[Northern Flatlander]

As I begin to gather, heat-treating in a toaster-oven is useless for consistency. Even if the bugger can reach the proper temp.'s. So Im looking hard at my "cooking oven" with reservations. Ques. is; Do you know of any problems associated with heating lead/alloys for hardening, leaving enough residual contamination to effect my health?
Thanks

Dwayner

[Veral]

  Most of my customers heat treat in the kitchen oven which their whole family eats from.  It leaves no residue because the lead isn't melted.  You should set the temp using only one or two bullets and take it up 10 deg at a time till the bullets slump if you tap the pan they are setting in, immediately after the thermostat clicks off.  Then back the temp off about 10 deg F to do your heat treating.

  My book fills in all the details of proper heat treat procedure, annealing, drawing etc.  Or ask a few more questions here if you want, if you don't have my book, or want to get going quicker than waiting till you can order and get one.

[Northern Flatlander]

Thanks for the response Veral.
I do have your book. It well explains the procedures for hardening. Even, for a simple mind like mine!

[Rustyinfla]

 Veral,
   Paco Kelly tells of a method he uses where he places the bullets in a pan of water with the nose sticking out of the water. then he uses a butane torch to apply heat to the nose of the bullet till he starts to see a faint color change. Then he moves on to the next bullet. The idea is to soften the nose while leaving the rest of the bullet hard. I was wondering if you have used this much on your bullets?

         Thanks,

[Veral]

  Yes, I've played with that and tried making special fixtures to keep the bullet shank cool, all to no avail.  It is easy to soften the nose by this method, but the sudden cooling reheat treats the bullet, so it hardens back up withing 24 hours just as when water dropping or oven heat treating.  The nose will get as hard as the heat treated bullets, but enough hardness returns that I find it not worth the effort.  I find it far easier and better to just tune the hardness of my rifle bullets to 14 to 16 bhn, then drive them fast as I can, which will be around 2450 fps with excellent accuracy and no leading, when using LBT lube.  These will expand out to very good ranges if the bullet has a good BC, as with the LBT  SP.8, which isn't in my website listing, but is available in many calibers and any weight for the asking.  Much more streamlined than the listed SP bullets.

  If one uses an alloy harder than 16 bhn, the bullets will break up rather than expand.  But, if 14 to 16 bhn is obtained with antimony content at the minimum possible to obtain that hardness, expansion and weight retention will be excellent.  About 1/3 ww with 1% tin, diluted with 2/3 plain lead works well when water dropping.  (1 part WW+tin to 2 parts soft lead.)