? On lead hardness

[SWANEEDB]

OK, I know I'll get an answer here. ? is what hardness data do I use, lyman, saeco or brinell. I have yet to cast my first boolit have been melting all my lead and keeping it seprate as to the different types of lead I'm melting. Just need to know what hardness data do I use when I get to casting boolits. Great forum, thanks for all the help. Dave

[MtGun44]

I don't quite understand the question. Using lead hardess data for what?

The most common unit is Brinell or BHN (Brinell Hardness Number) and the Lee
and LBT meters measure directly in BHN. I don't have or use the Saeco, but
apparently they provide a BHN conversion chart for users that want to compare
to other units. The various hardness scales are kinda like measuring the length
of a table - you can do it in feet, inches, meters, millimeters or furlongs - the
table stays the same and you should use the one that is most convenient, almost
certainly NOT furlongs!

For a beginner, don't get wrapped around the axle on things like BHN. Start with
wheel wts, maybe adding a bit of tin from solder or other source to get the mold
to fill out well. Many other things like boolit fit, lube and design need to be sorted
out before sweating BHN too much. Probably the biggest influence of BHN is
as a commerical boolit seller's marketing come-on where they are trying to
convince customers that harder is necessarily better. For pistols, this is about
180 degrees wrong. For most shooters with most calibers of pistols, softer is
usually better. Of course, no rule applies everywhere and hard cast is good
(if fitted properly!!) for many things, but is probably not the best place to start.

Bill

[Slow Elk 45/70]

Yup, MTGun44 has the idea, from your post I think you are a little mixed up , so you might want to take his advice and slow down a bit, sort things out.

Lots of variables to consider when choosing your alloy , wheel weights work for 90% of casting most folks do. or a mix that is close to it.

I could write a book here but go to the LASC thread, or google it, do some reading there, they also have a lot of mixes of alloys on charts if you are mixing different alloys with lead.

Welcome and good luck