How hard is to hard for C&B lead?

[Muddy Creek Sam]

Howdy all,

I have been casting RB for my 1851 Navy Colts with dead soft, Recently I obtained some Isotope containers that are 8 BHN, about 65 lbs. Are these to hard to be easily pushing in with the loading lever?

Thanks,

Sam :D

[Ricochet]

Air cooled wheelweights definitely are. I don't have a hardness tester. I've seen posted BHN numbers anywhere from about 9 to 15 for ACWW.

[JCherry]

Muddy Creek Sam,

I've used wheel weights for a .36 cal remington and they worked for me.

One thing you may want to keep in mind is if you are using Lee round ball molds you may damage the mold with harder lead.

Harder lead may be a bit more difficult to load but that would depend at least in part on the fit of your ball to your chamber.

Have Fun,

JCherry

[docone31]

Ok, fly in the ointment time.
I routinely water drop. I cast some C&B for my .44 Navy. I water dropped wheel weight and they fired real well through my pistol.
They balls were .454. They fired just as well as my pure lead balls of same size. Hit a little harder though.

[waksupi]

Sam, I think you will have to test them to see. Although WW boolits will shoot from a C&B revolver, the concern is breaking the loading lever.

JCherry
"One thing you may want to keep in mind is if you are using Lee round ball molds you may damage the mold with harder lead."

Would you care to expand on that a bit? Many of us cast WW boolits in Lee molds regularly, and I have seen no signs of damage from them

[jim4065]

Gotta be a joke. I used to cast 45 and 50 cals for the guys in my group - they always "paid" by providing extra ww's (much more than I used to cast a few hundred balls at a time). We didn't use soft lead for anything but Maxi's - it cost too much. Never damaged a Lee mold (or any other) that way for thousands of round balls. :-?

[Archer]

I've casted round balls out of WW
for years using Lee molds, and there
has never been any damage to the molds.

[mooman76]

I don't see any way either. I did it for years before I got soft lead and can't really think of any way it would happen. RB moulds drop easier than about anything. Maybe he miss wrote what he actually meant.

[nicholst55]

A friend of mine once broke the loading lever on his 1858 Remington repro with too-hard lead RBs. I have no idea how hard the lead was, or what quality the Remington rero was. I was using the same lead alloy to cast boolits for my .357 Mag at the time, and I was having good results; mostly mid-range loads.

[JCherry]

Concerning the damage to the Lee round ball mold using wheel weight lead.

I used wheel weight lead in a Lee single cavity .457 round ball mold in the mid-70's that I used in an original 1860 Army. The mold was one of those where the sprue is on the edge of the ball and when cut does not leave any sprue tit on the ball.

In use over perhaps a year it appeared to me that the hard lead caused the thin aluminum metal on the edge of the cavity to bend downward into the cavity when the sprue plate was opened.

I "whittled" out the bent part of aluminum on the edge of the mold cavity and quit using wheel weight lead in that mold. Ball from that mold now have a small sprue tit on the edge of the ball.

I was not referring to any type of Lee mold other than a round ball mold. It appears from the other posts that my experience with this mold was the exception.

Have Fun,

JCherry

[Hellgate]

The harder lead will stress the rammer if the chambers are significantly smaller than the ball. The Remington rammer is reportedly a little weaker than the colt rammer but don't quote me. The harder lead will also pry apart the colts and put more stress on the arbor while rammming and when the ball slams into the forcing cone upon firing. I once bought some .454RBs from a commercial caster that were cast with hard lead. I felt like I put two years of wear on a pair of 44 cal ASM Navies in the one CAS match I used those balls. A 36 cal likely can take a harder ball as there is less hard lead surface to reform during ramming and firing than for a 44 cal. I wouldn't use any lead harder than 1:20 tin:lead. I do not know what the BHN is.

[Muddy Creek Sam]

Hellgate,

BHN of 20:1 is supposed to be 10. That is what I use in my BP Cartridges. I cast a 100 RBs out of old sinkers Thought I was going to break the ram then, Did shoot but a couple loads of them. Guess I will cast a few with this lead and try them. If not will add them to my Boolit pile of ingots.

Sam :D

[Hellgate]

Here's a post I copied years ago I believe from the MLML list:

"LEAD HARDNESS TESTING USING ART PENCILS
The following is a short version of a method commonly used to test the
hardness of paint films, and your library can give you a full description if
you ask them for "The American Standard Test Method (ASTM) for Pencil
Hardness."
In brief, you can go to an art supply store and get a set of pencils
whose core varies in hardness from "9B" to "9H". The actual range runs from[softest] 9B,>>>1B, HB, F, 1H, >>>9H [hardest]. The harder pencils can be used to test some aluminum alloys, and are much too hard for lead alloys. Leadwill run about 4B or 5B, depending on purity, and linotype will run about HB or F. So a dozen pencils will cover the entire range.
To use, you shave the wood away with a penknife to expose the lead
core of the pencil, but without cutting into it with the knife. I cut close
and peel the thin wood away with my fingernail, leaving about 1/8 to 1/4"
exposed. You can also get mechanical pencils with seperate cores that
eliminate the problem, but it's not necessary. Once you have some exposed
core, you hold it vertical and sand the end to a flat wadcutter shape, with
sharp edges. Use about 400 grit sandpaper, and wipe the graphite dust off soit won't act as a lubricant.
Now hold the pencil in an ordinary writting position, and try to push
the lower edge into the lead surface. If the graphite core is harder than thealloy, it will cut into the metal, or at least leave some serious s6cratches in it. But if the metal is as hard or harder than the graphite core, it will not be able to gouge. The hardness is ranked as the hardest graphite core thatwill NOT cut in. If your bullet is resistant to pencils from 6B through 2B,but a B scratches it, or peels up a small shaving, the hardness is 2B.
This isn't as precise as Brinnell numbers, but it doesn't take
thousands of dollars of testing equipment to do the job, either. And it lets
you reproduce the hardness of different alloys with considerable confidence. If a batch of metal that tested "B" 5 years ago is all gone, you can blend anyother combination of metals to get a "B" and rest assured that it will performin a very similar manner to the long gone metal in your handload, even though it may not have the same castability, cost, etc."

I have 2H through 5B Dead soft lead is 4B-5B. It helps me determine if lead is soft, sort of soft, medium, hard, and real hard. That way I can determine if it is for muzzle loaders, pistol, rifle etc.

[WickedGoodOutdoors]

I had a mold (Had before I lent it out and did not get it back) for .36 cal conicals

Cast up a bunch from wheel wieghts and found that the best way , Only Way, to load them was to remove the cylinder. Place it on a wood block. Charge with powder lube and seat all six bulletts at once with a hardwood block on top. Press them all intogether. Pain in the Buttocks. Forget conicals in a pistol and stick with lead roundballs.

Actually the .375 Concal wheel wieght works really well when used as a slug in a .410 shotgun. Just the right size inside the plastic shotgup and is a real zipper with 12 grains of Red Dot

[Bloodman14]

I have an 1851 Colt Confederate Navy in .44, that takes .454 pure PB. I cast some .451 RB in WW, and they do fine. I used the smaller dia. to make up for the harder alloy. So far, no problems with the ram. Don't know that my RB mold (Lee) can tell the difference.

[Hellgate]

Gunnerd,
You might want to measure the .451 WW balls you cast in the mold. The RB molds are cut to cast the proper dia balls of PURE lead the shrinks when it solidifies. The WWs shrink LESS so uyou might have .452 or .453 dia WW balls.

[waksupi]

Concerning the damage to the Lee round ball mold using wheel weight lead.

I used wheel weight lead in a Lee single cavity .457 round ball mold in the mid-70's that I used in an original 1860 Army. The mold was one of those where the sprue is on the edge of the ball and when cut does not leave any sprue tit on the ball.

In use over perhaps a year it appeared to me that the hard lead caused the thin aluminum metal on the edge of the cavity to bend downward into the cavity when the sprue plate was opened.

I "whittled" out the bent part of aluminum on the edge of the mold cavity and quit using wheel weight lead in that mold. Ball from that mold now have a small sprue tit on the edge of the ball.

I was not referring to any type of Lee mold other than a round ball mold. It appears from the other posts that my experience with this mold was the exception.

Have Fun,

JCherry

Well, you made me go look. I dug out an old Lee RB mold, and sonofagun, it has the same thing as you experienced. I'll have to look at the rest of them. It kind of makes sense, as thin as that edge is. Thanks for pointing this out!

[JCherry]

Waksupi,

Ya'll had me worried that I'd gotten a defective mold. It would have been a little late for me to ask for a replacement from Lee.

As I said I just "whittled" out the bent area and it works just fine with soft lead. I only use ball from it in that original 1860. I think I last shot it December of 2001 when my son was on leave from the Air Force.

Have Fun,

JCherry