Heat treating shot success

[J. Scott Hanes]

Originally Posted by Milton C Starr

So I learned about heat treating lead shot that contains around 6% antimony from some coyote hunters for getting less deformation from setback and through the chokes. Most of them seem to be using BPI super buck which I have a bottle of in T shot I read this is normally around 12 bhn and heat treating it can raise it to around 22 bhn without making it brittle. Now I dont have a scientific method to test this besides the tried and trued channel locks. Heres what a untreated pellet looks like vs one I baked at 420F for 45 mins and quenching. You can barely squeeze them with the channel locks, now even the untreated ones still take quite a bit of force to flatten so they are pretty hard. The shot turns a light dull grey after baking compared to it new. I think this is perhaps some sort of lube or something BPI puts on it because they feel what I would describe as super dry after baking and before they are really slick. I plan to coat them in some mica as I have been doing to add some lubrication back to them. Now I tried this also with BPI nickel plated shot and it does seem harder but not as much as the unplated shot the color didnt change any with the plated shot. I plan to run this in my 8 ga since its cylinder choked not sure what effects it would have in a fixed choke but I figure the best way to test that would be to find a cheap single shot 12 ga with a damascus barrel in the future.

Did you heat in a kitchen oven? What medium did you quench the shot in? Most shot has a coating of graphite to make it slick. Perhaps the graphite was 'baked' off?

[Milton C Starr]

Originally Posted by J. Scott Hanes

Did you heat in a kitchen oven? What medium did you quench the shot in? Most shot has a coating of graphite to make it slick. Perhaps the graphite was 'baked' off?

Its a small portable oven I have in the garage, I just quenched it in room temp water let it sit for a few minutes. Im assuming it may be graphite I thought it had a higher temp range than 420F though it could be any sort of coating though it doesnt seem to rub off or leave a residue on your hands but does inside the bottle it comes in. I read mica basically does the same thing as graphite but it has a much higher temperature rating. Now mica does get on everything and all over the place its pretty messy lol.

Ive seen a wide variety of buckshot coatings a cheap popular one is graphite mixed with Lee Alox. I suppose if you wanted to squeeze the absolute most performance out of lead shot you could heat treat it then coat it or powder coat it and use it in a buffered load. In theory that should give the best results but I havnt seen anyone try all those together probably because it would be time consuming.