estimateing hardness of lead

[hillbill]

ill admit im totally new to casting bullete.i have several bricks of lead and some other lead i got at a auction.right now im useing a couple of them for anchors on my fishin boat.how do i tell if the hardness of this lead?im not buying a hardness tester, just wondered if yuall has anyway of estimateing the hardness?what im looking at is casting bullets for my roa and for my 45 long colt blackhawk with alox tumble lube.a guy gave me a bucket of wheel weights and im not sure if i should just mix them in or what?love to hear from yu guys on what i should do.?

[Nobade]

A thumbnail can go a long way to estimating lead hardness. Back before hardness testers, there was "soft" - you could scratch it with a thumbnail, and "hard" - you couldn't. That still works. "soft" for low velocity pistol bullets, "hard" for rifles. After you do this for a while, you will be able to refine it more into "softer" and "harder". I've been doing it for about 40 years now, and my thumbnail is well calibrated. Never really had any need for a hardness tester to give me a number.

[Anduril]

A lot of guys get hung up on the hardness numbers, I'm not one of them. Like Nobade the fingernail test is all I use.

roa = Ruger Old Army? If so, save the "soft" lead for this one.

The 45 Colt will do well with straight wheel weights.
..

[Lloyd Smale]

If your going to cast bullets and buy unknown lead a hardness tester can be bought for under a 100 bucks and in the case of the lee set up alot less. they are about a nessisity to me. Ive been doing this for many years and kind of got a feel for it but still find that sometimes im way off in my estimateing.

[blhof]

Plus 1 on the hardness tester, unless you're sure of the lead hardness, especially for b/p.  You need dead soft or as near as possible, or it's a pain to load and puts undue pressure on the loading lever, accuracy also suffers as harder leads don't obturate the bore as well as soft lead at b/p pressures.

[SHOOTALL]

are your bricks kind of round like a cake ? and weigh about 10 lbs each ? if so they are most likely plumbers lead for joints in cast iron pipe and water main. If really old maybe an oval shape. They are what i use in my BP gun. If it has virgin stamped in it and is in smaller cakes 5 lb.it was for wiping lead still soft but cleaner .

[retmech]

Drop your bricks on concrete.  If they just go "thud" they are probably straight lead, if they have a "ring" to them they are harder than straight lead.  Thumbnail test is a good "quick and dirty" test also.

[cooper]

I heard of an interesting, cheap way to measure hardness. 

The method was to buy a small assortment of artists pencils.  You can buy them individually at craft stores.  There are about a dozen different hardnesses of artists drawing pencils, but for lead alloys I think you only need about 4 or 5.  You can then estimate the hardness of your alloy by noting which hardness pencil scratches the alloy, and which one doesn't.

I never messed with it as I have the Lee hardness tester, but it looked interesting.   I copied the article somewhere, and I'll see if I can find it tonight, or you can do an internet search if you're interested. 

[cooper]

I found a link:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=75455


Here's a table (from the above link) that someond posted on the pencil hardness and what it corresponded to:

6B = Pure lead, about 5 BHN
5B
4B
3B = 1 in 20 tin/lead alloy, age softened, about 10 BHN
2B
B
HB = Lyman no 2 alloy, about 15 BHN
H = Linotype, supposedly about 22 BHN, but that seems high
2H
3H
4H

[stimpylu32]

hillbill

Just do it the easy way , mix 1/2 and 1/2 with the WWs and then water quench strait from the mold , this will make them hard enough for the Blackhawk up to about 1400 fps , for the roa just skip the water quench step . 

stimpy