What's with the trend towards super hard cast lead alloy low pressure handgun bullets

[Soundguy]

Been looking around a few sites I'm a member of.. Many of them are reloader oriented.

I keep seeing people getting uber hard handgun bullets..like 22 bhn for low pressure stop..like 9mm and 38spl 44 sol and 45 colt..etc.

What the heck.. I must be doing something wrong cuz I shoot most handgun around 10bhn. If it's a magnum load maybe gas checked and 12 if lots of fps..but that's imho.. That's almost too hard.

I'm not even doing 30 cal rifle at 22 bin. Just 16-18 and gas checked. Same with 35 cal.

Have I been doing it wrong all this time? I shoot into sand and water and recover projectiles. Always 100% weight retention and mushroomed. Like a dime. Accuracy is superior to commercial jwords and no lead fouling. Hammer smash tests always yields a nice deforming non fracturing bullet.

What am I missing?

[44MAG#1]

Really you are not doing anything wrong. You do things your way and someone else does it their way. Each has their own way. If it works for the individual that is all that matters. All kinds of shooters. Some with thousands of dollars worth og equipment to bare minimum equipment and the in-between people. People with college degrees to people like me that barely made out of high school.
Differences are what makes it interesting.
If it WORKS for YOU then that is all that matters.
Do your thing and be happy.

Been looking around a few sites I'm a member of.. Many of them are reloader oriented.

I keep seeing people getting uber hard handgun bullets..like 22 bhn for low pressure stop..like 9mm and 38spl 44 sol and 45 colt..etc.

What the heck.. I must be doing something wrong cuz I shoot most handgun around 10bhn. If it's a magnum load maybe gas checked and 12 if lots of fps..but that's imho.. That's almost too hard.

I'm not even doing 30 cal rifle at 22 bin. Just 16-18 and gas checked. Same with 35 cal.

Have I been doing it wrong all this time? I shoot into sand and water and recover projectiles. Always 100% weight retention and mushroomed. Like a dime. Accuracy is superior to commercial jwords and no lead fouling. Hammer smash tests always yields a nice deforming non fracturing bullet.

What am I missing?

[rancher1913]

the commercial casters use a hard lead to enable them to ship their product with little distortion, is this what your talking about. most on here that cast their own use as soft as they can get away with for cost savings.

[Sam Sackett]

I agree with you. I shoot soft lead. The hardest I shoot is clip on wheel weights and that's for hot 357's. Soft lead casts well for me and seems to obituaries well enough to seal the bores. I have no trouble with leading.

I've heard more folks complaining about purchased bullets being too hard and the lube they use is too hard also. Manufacturers like it that way because there's less damage in shipping.

Maybe it's a new fad??

Sam Sackett

[Hickok]

I have gone to 50/50 clip-on ww and pure lead plus some tin, and Powder-coat for all my shooting from handguns to rifles. I don't go over 2100 fps in rifles (gas-checked), and run from 900 to 1300 fps in various handgun cartridges.

No need for hard cast in my practice shooting or hunting loads.

[Soundguy]

That must be it hard lead and lube for shipping.

10 works fantastic for most handgun for me. Many times I'm shooting straight range scrap.

[GhostHawk]

There are those who think if there is a problem, that they have to go harder.

And then there are those who think if there is a problem they need to go bigger.

I subscribe to the second school of thought myself.

[reloader28]

the commercial casters use a hard lead to enable them to ship their product with little distortion, is this what your talking about. most on here that cast their own use as soft as they can get away with for cost savings.

This is it. If you cast commercially, you have to have a hard bullet, hard lube to keep it safe in shipping. Unfortunately, you also need a 1-2thou smaller dia to fit all barrels, which usually dont work for most people.

We shoot 15-16BHN (air cooled clip on WW) from a pile of different rifles and handguns and it works great for us. If we need a special softer alloy for certain hunting or self defense loads, we make them softer but never have we needed harder.

It seems to me that with the huge influx of noobes we have (most noobe reloaders), they have gone back to the old thinking (without doing the research) that you have to have a hard bullet to make it work. Most of us know that is far from the truth.

[Rcmaveric]

Agree with the above. Hard bullets and lube is the trend for the commercial guys for shipping.

There is a few sites and articles I have read the recommended hard heat treated bullets for full throttle 357 Mag. But I do just fine with my normal alloy of 10BHN.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk

[CoolHandMoss]

Harder boolits may be preferred for those burning faster powder in the smaller pistol loads. I've been resorting to titegroup more often lately to get more rounds per pound since it's so hard to find powder. Titegroup doesn't work so well with softer boolits.

[reddog81]

I think discussions like this show how versatile cast bullets are. One guy uses a 10 BHN bullet and gets good results, so he claims claims 10 BHN is the best. The next guy uses a 22 BHN bullet and gets good results and claims 22 BHN is the best. When in actually the BHN of the bullet is only one factor and is one of the less important factors unless pushing the limits.

[Soundguy]

Harder boolits may be preferred for those burning faster powder in the smaller pistol loads. I've been resorting to titegroup more often lately to get more rounds per pound since it's so hard to find powder. Titegroup doesn't work so well with softer boolits.

Titegroup is virtually all I load with for handgun and have had -0- issues. again.. I run around 10 bhn. On 357 full loads I do use gas checks and up it to about 12 bhn though.

[mdi]

I believe it's plain ignorance. Newer casters were often lead to believe that "Harder is Better" and wanted to purchase extra hard cast bullets. Of course the commercial casters wanted to make sales so they gave them what they wanted (most already used harder alloy for shipping survival anyway). Then the term "Hard Cast" began being used for any cast bullet (again, by newer casters) and now if a bullet is cast, regardless of the BHN, it is called Hard Cast and the trend has gone to "normal" bullets being 18-22 BHN. Here on Castboolits you can tell the newer cast bullet users as they all use the term Hard Cast...

Jes my thinking as for me, "Hard Cast" is anything above 12 BHN...

[Soundguy]

Agreed. Hard cast for me is rifle or super magnum loading.

[megasupermagnum]

I've tried everything from pure lead to heat treated COWW (BHN 25-30), and I have not found any issue with the very hard stuff. Even a low pressure loads, like my 45 ACP target loads going 700 fps, it doesn't matter if they are pure lead or super hard, it all works. There is certainly a minimum harness needed to maintain the integrity of the bullet for higher pressures, or they will deform and possibly foul the barrel, but it is far lower than most people would believe. 20:1 alloy should get you to at least 30,000 PSI with good accuracy in handguns. COWW gets most of what I need from handguns, although the very top end loads over 40,000 PSI it seems gas checks help.

For the most part I like bullets as soft as I can for hunting. One place you would want a super hard bullet would be any time you want amazing penetration. A water dropped COWW bullet runs around 25 BHN for me, yet is a very strong bullet. Linotype is maybe 22 BHN tops, and is brittle by comparison.

Rifles is a whole other ball game. When trying to push velocity, I always get better accuracy with a harder bullet. If you are ok with 2 MOA accuracy, then it doesn't really matter.

[waksupi]

Been looking around a few sites I'm a member of.. Many of them are reloader oriented.

I keep seeing people getting uber hard handgun bullets..like 22 bhn for low pressure stop..like 9mm and 38spl 44 sol and 45 colt..etc.

What the heck.. I must be doing something wrong cuz I shoot most handgun around 10bhn. If it's a magnum load maybe gas checked and 12 if lots of fps..but that's imho.. That's almost too hard.

I'm not even doing 30 cal rifle at 22 bin. Just 16-18 and gas checked. Same with 35 cal.

Have I been doing it wrong all this time? I shoot into sand and water and recover projectiles. Always 100% weight retention and mushroomed. Like a dime. Accuracy is superior to commercial jwords and no lead fouling. Hammer smash tests always yields a nice deforming non fracturing bullet.

What am I missing?

It's probably because they have never come to this board to learn what is proper to use.

[mdi]

it's probably because they have never come to this board to learn what is proper to use.

Amen!

[2005f22c]

It's probably because they have never come to this board to learn what is proper to use.

I started casting about 3 weeks ago, so I'm a complete noob. I've been casting 45 ACP round nose (Lyman 45 Caliber 225 Grain 452 diameter mold). I've tested my cast boolits with the Lee hardness tester and got 11.8 as the result. This should be good to go, however I've noticed that my boolits behave differently than the boolits I've bought from companies like Brazos Bullet Company. The boolits from Brazos don't dent when dropped onto a concrete floor from a height of about 3 feet. Also, the tips do not deform when run through a bullet feeder tube. My own cast boolits do dent when dropped on the floor, and the round nose tips also flatten out a small amount when I stack them and run them through a Lee bullet feeder tube for seating. This is the reason I want to make my own cast boolits harder, is this unnecessary?

[44MAG#1]

This is what I would like to know. If one is casting their own bullets and is getting good results with them doing what they are doing, does it matter if they are soft, medium soft, medium, medium hard, hard, or harder even more what difference does it make? If caster 1 has good luck with soft does that mean that caster 2 is wrong if he uses medium or if caster 2 uses medium and gets good results does that mean caster 1 is wrong for using soft and caster 3 is wrong if he uses hard alloy and gets good results? What about the casters that uses medium soft and medium hard? Where do they fall in all of this? Or is all this due to human nature that if someone isnt doing it my/your way then their way is wrong?
Could it be that human nature is heavily involved?

[Sam Sackett]

As long as what you are doing is working, you don't have to change a thing. One of the reasons I shoot soft bullets is that I can get soft lead pretty easily (and cheap) and COWW are hard to find. I don't want to buy harder lead for $2+ and shipping. Guess I'm cheep!

As long as the bullet fits the gun, you should be able to shoot without leading. The exception is when you get into higher pressures. Then you will need harder bullets or gas checks. For normal plinking, soft works. You would be surprised to find out how little a few dings matter with a pistol bullet at shorter ranges. Try it sometime. Shoot a few pristine bullets, then bang up a few and shoot them. Within about 20 yards, I don't think you'll see much difference in accuracy.

Just my 2 cents.....FWIW
Sam Sackett