Need advice on lead hardness

[creature]

I'm pretty new to casting and have a couple questions about lead hardness. I'm waiting on a Cabin Tree Hardness tester and have been waiting to cast bullets until I get it in. I've been fluxing and casting ingots. It turns out they are a few weeks out and I'd kind of like to cast a few bullets. I wanna make sure they're hard enough.

I'm casting for .45acp and 9mm. The lead I have now is from wheel weights. What would be the easiest/cheapest way to increase the hardness of the metal? Should I add tin or would water quenching be enough? If I need to add tin, what ratio should I use?

[retread]

You may want to add a small amount of tin for castibilty. Not a lot, maybe 6 inch lenth of 1/8 lead free solder for a charge in a 20 lb. pot. Other that that the straight wheel weights will be just fine. For my 9 mm and 45 acp I actually add about 1/3 soft lead to my wheel weights.

Start casting and have fun!

[Tatume]

I used straight wheelweights for years and cast beautiful bullets. I'm adding soft lead to my mix now just because wheelweight metal is more expensive and harder to get. A little bit of tin is nice, but if your mold and alloy are the right temperature wheelweight casts well without any additions. For your 45 ACP and 9mm Para applications it is more than satisfactory as is.

[Bullshop]

Quenching is a whole lot cheaper and will make them a whole lot harder than adding tin.

[creature]

Awesome, thanks guys! Glad I don't have to procure any tin, it's expensive. Is there a certain BHN I need to aim for with 45acp and 9mm?

[mdi]

Harder ain't necessarily better. Good bullet to gun fit is more important than BHN, IMO. A BHN 25 bullet will lead the barrel if it doesn't fit the gun (too small)...

[MtGun44]

No reason to increase hardness of normal clip on wwt alloy for 9mm or 45 ACP.

Hardness is massively overrated, and in fact is at least a third level variable for normal
shooting. If you are developing expanding loads, then too hard is bad and hardness
control becomes important. If you are punching paper, hardness borders on irrelevant
at pistol velocities, including the "ordinary" magnums.

Bill

[runfiverun]

for the 45 wwwwww's and some soft will do fine.
oddly I do the same thing for my 9mm's also.

[creature]

So since I'm just going to do 9mm and 45acp do you guys think I even need a hardness tester? I'm thinking I probably won't need one but wanna make sure.

Thanks for all the help guys, I appreciate it.

[Iowa Fox]

If all you intend to cast for the rest of your life is 9mm &45ACP chances are you won't need a hardness tester. But if your like the rest of us that started with one handgun caliber and now we are shooting several rifle & handgun calibers a tester is a nice item to have. Especially if you start to push the velocity and blend odd alloys.

[220swiftfn]

Take the tester reading with a grain of salt. (Don't rely on BHN too heavily, as others have stated) There are plenty of long time casters that don't have a tester and don't want one either. Or they get one and find out that the alloy they've been using for years that fills out well, doesn't lead, and performs the way that they want it to is somehow "wrong".

The most important thing is "fit".



Dan

[dromia]

I have a Cabine Tree tester and love it. However I casted excellent boolits before I had it and would continue to do so if I didn't a tester is not necessary to cast good boolits and hardness isn't neccessary either but good boolit fit is. The vast majority of my shooting is at paper out to 600 yrds and range scrap serves me well at a BHN of around 12.

The tester is fun and informative but not neccessary, the main practical benefit I get from mine is to give me a hardness indication of unknown alloys that I come across and to satisfy the curiosity of friends about their alloy hardness.

[cbrick]

Don't get wrapped up in the term "Hard Cast". It is a term invented by commercial casters to get the unknowing to buy their bullets. Hard bullets withstand the rigors of shipping better than a proper BHN alloy and has nothing to do with what is better for their customers. Too hard is the second leading cause of bore leading and poor accuracy, the first cause is poor bullet fit in YOUR firearm.

I shoot 8 BHN stick-on WW + 2% tin HP's in my 1911 45 with zero leading and good accuracy. Clip-on WW will run about 11-12 BHN and be fine for your firearms as long as the bullets fit your guns. There is no need to be shooting diamonds so don't get wrapped up in the hard cast hype.

Rick

[Kull]

So since I'm just going to do 9mm and 45acp do you guys think I even need a hardness tester? I'm thinking I probably won't need one but wanna make sure.

Thanks for all the help guys, I appreciate it.

The pencil test works pretty well for what it is.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?75455-Testing-hardness-with-pencils

[MtGun44]

I cast and had great success for 30+ yrs before I got a hardness tester. I use it occasionally,
but if I lost it, I'd be fine. IMO, nice but not anywhere near critical piece of equipment,
ESPECIALLY if you are loading for 9mm and .45 ACP.

Bill

[runfiverun]

actually the term 'hard cast' was invented to denote the use of antimony versus just lead/tin alloys.
it come into use at the start of the last century.

anyway a hardness tester is really useful to blend scrap alloys into one homogenous bhn pile of alloy.
you still won't know what's in all that alloy, but you can duplicate it's hardness.