I have a 500lb lead ingot

[NavyVet1959]

no I didnt try to cut it like steel I just got it flowing worked the groove in an up and down motion melting it deeper and deeper

I did think of going to a welding shop and getting a couple stainless steel rods and do just that with my arc welder making a make shift hot knife

to my calculations this thing is 3.5 million grains,..thats alot of boolits,..but the thing is I'm a noob and have yet to cast a boolit,..I'm guessing next step is to make a few ingots and should test the lead for hardness,..any simple way of doing that?

It's a lot of bullets if you're casting for .223 (63.6K at 55gr), but if you're casting for .45-70 (8642 at 405 gr), those bullets eat up your lead supply pretty quickly...

You can test for harness with a set of different hardness pencil leads. Lee also makes a device that you can buy. If you have a scanner for your computer, and a small diameter steel ball, and a scale, you can make the indention in an ingot with a known weight applied to it, scan the ingot at a high resolution, measure the diameter of the indentation, and then plug in the values to a formula that will give you the hardness. Since I have a scanner, stainless steel ball bearing, arbor press, and bathroom scale, that's the solution that I use.

[D Crockett]

I got a big chunk of lead a few years back and it had a hole in one end the other end looked like it had been sawn off . I took it and pulled it up on a oak tree branch set up my melter and lowered it down and started to melt it and make ingots out of the lead it worked real good for me just my 2 cents worth D Crocett