how soft is soft enough?

[fisher2]

so ive heard from some sources if the lead is soft enough to scratch with your finger with no effort that its "pure" enough for flintlocks is this a decent enough test?

[DIRT Farmer]

The standard test was/is to take a piece of your patching material big enough to get hold of, barely start the ball in the barrel then remove it. If the lead is soft enough the ball will have the weave of the patch on the ring where it meets the rifling. This allows the gas seal and grips the ball to spin it from the rifling.

Generaly if you can scratch it and peal up a sliver it is soft enough.

[idahoron]

I have a Cabine tree tester. I can scratch 18 BHN hard lead with my thumb. Pure is 5 BHN. My recommendation if you don't want a tester is the drop test. Take a ingot and drop it onto cement. if it rings it is hard if it thuds it is soft enough for round balls. Ron

[Maven]

So ive heard from some sources if the lead is soft enough to scratch with your finger with no effort that its "pure" enough for flintlocks is this a decent enough test?

fisher-2, But this begs the questions, what are you going to use those projectiles (RB's? conicals?) for and whether you're going to cast them yourself? Also, if the latter, what dimension is your bore and what diameter projectile does your mold cast?

For practice, plinking, I've seen no difference between RB's cast of pure Pb v. those cast of wheelweights + 1% tin in terms of accuracy. (True, the harder ones were a tad lighter and ~.0005" wider, but no other difference was apparent.) As for hunting with the harder ones, I'll defer to the experts here. OTOH, I found hard cast conicals to be very difficult to start and less accurate than pure Pb ones. Btw, if your mold casts a bit small for your bore, using a harder alloy may help since you'll get a RB which is of a slightly greater diameter. Lastly, if you have more hard alloy than Pb, consider using it for practice, etc., saving the pure Pb for other things.

[I'll Make Mine]

For a patched ball, softness of the lead isn't that critical; it just needs to be soft enough that the patch can grip (with the right size ball, right thickness and material patch, a surprisingly hard ball will grip and rifle just fine). It's cap & ball revolvers where soft lead is critical, to avoid damaging the loading lever from the excessive force needed to shave and seat the harder ball.

[Hellgate]

Pure dead soft lead is critical for hollow based minies to function well. I've tried harder alloys to shoot bigger charges in thin skirted minies but they were much more accurate to use soft lead and thicker skirted minies for hunting charges.