Casting with hardball

[David2011]

I'm just thinking about "hardball". I believe that that term for cast bullets makes as much sense as "hard cast" (when I started casting cast bullets, of any hardness was called "cast", and soft swaged bullets were called "swaged". Seems like commercial bullet casters have added two new terms to our casting vocabulary. And what's the industry standard for "hard cast"? 16 BHN? 18 BHN? And what exactly is considered "hardball"?...).

I think most foundry hardball alloy is 92% lead, 6% antimony and 2% tin. I understand that the basis for this blend is more for durability for shipping as is the hard wax lube found in commercial boolits over shootability considerations. I'm sure there are other answers. The Lead Alloy Calculator on this site lists that same blend ratio and says the BHN is 16.

Description Tin % Antimony % Arsenic % Copper % Silver % Lead % Hardness
Hardball Alloy 2.00% 6.00% 0% 0% 0% 92.0% Brinell 16


I have cast straight lino for .44 Mag and it shot well. It went diagonally though a 225 or so pound sow without shattering, unlike common knowledge said it would but it did not expand. Entry and exit holes looked the same to me. More recently I have been gravitating to softer and softer alloys.

[BAGTIC]

A bullet that expands and stays in the target yields exactly the same amount of energy as one that fragments and stays in the target. It is not the 'energy' that does the killing.

[mdi]

I believe "hard cast" and "hard ball" are just "sales terms". New lead bullet shooters seem to think "harder is better" so to increase sales, commercial casters give them what they want. They just call their already too hard bullets (shipping hardness, not shooting hardness) "hard cast" and a new lead shooter thinks he got the right stuff. Same with "hard ball". I don't think there is a specific hardness that determines "hard cast" or "hard ball" nor a standard. New lead shooters mistakenly use the terms and soon they became common especially on forums...

[fredj338]

Ok so the general consensus is that a 16bhn is a bit hard. Being that the cyl measures .431 should I get a mold that measures .432 and then size the bulletin down?

Your bullet final diameter will be determined by alloy casting temp. Bigger is usually better. So if having a custom mold made, I would probably go 0.432", based on clip ww alloy.