wdww when to size

[testhop]

i like to cast up a 50 cal ammo can of boolits at a time .
but always acww now i want try wdww so here is my question do i size right away or can can i wait till thay are needed?

[sargenv]

Since water dropped WW's will harden over a week or two, I would imagine you might want to size these as soon as you can to make it easier on you. But that's only my theory, maybe someone more in the know can elaborate.

[DLCTEX]

They will be much harder the next day, making the effort to size much more difficult. I size as soon as possible.

[rob45]

The water-drop method of hardening works best in conjunction with no sizing at all.
Ideally, the boolit is concentric and within diameter tolerance so that no sizing is necessary when using this method. Dry the boolits, then either tumble lube or use an oversize die in the lubesizer.

Lead alloys work-soften, meaning that boolit you intentionally made harder by water dropping is now being made softer when you size it.

How much softer can it be worked by sizing? Someone with more experimentation time available will have to answer that one.

Many people size the WD boolits anyways, and seem to do fine. Perhaps they're reaching a happy medium where, even with sizing, the boolit still remains harder than air-cooled.

As always, figure out what works best for yourself. But if you do size them, both DLCTEX and sargenv are correct- do it as soon as possible to make it easier on both you and the equipment.

[fecmech]

I try and size after taking the bullets out of the water and drying them right after casting. If for some reason I can't do that, after drying them I place them in my freezer. This slows the hardening process dramatically and you can size 2-3 days latter with the same effort as immediate sizing. Try it sometime, freeze some after water dropping and let some stay at room temp. Run them through your sizer after 3 days and you will notice the difference.

[sqlbullet]

While I agree theoretically with what rob45, I have to question this practically. Here is why.

If I check how deep the indent in made by the Lee hardness test is, I find that even at the very highest end of the wdww scale (25-26) then indent is .003 deep. In order to work the metal that deep, you would have to size the bullet down on the order of .004", which is .002" on each side of the bullet.

And, while it is true that this very outermost layer is what contacts the bore, it is also true that it will get worked to far above this depth in the first 1" or so of travel down the barrel as it is engraved by the rifling.

I will have to conduct some tests on this one day, but for my purposes now, I would size them within an hour or two of casting, and consider the work softening to be negligible for our purposes.