Testing hardness with pencils

[DougGuy]

It's not oversimplifying, but you can't "group" an alloy based on hardness, if that were easy to do, Brinell would only have 4 numbers when it comes to soft metals. You could scrape with a pencil and say it is harder or not harder than the pencil, but it still does not tell you zip about the actual hardness. Just use the specific pencil that cuts it because that's the way the test and the standards were designed to work.

[bangerjim]

II used to take my Cabine with me. Now I rely on my own metallurgy knowledge.

After messing with lead and alloys for a time, I can pretty much determine the relative hardness by just banging the piece against a steel bin.....something like your referring to with just the 4 pencils. That is all that is really needed.

Back in the shop, I can run my Cabine test and determine the exact hardness.

But.....BUT....what is more valuable than the hardness is the x-ray readout the yards give me when I buy the lead. And that test they do for free. Just ask them!

bangerjim

[Steve Marshall]

DougGuy, your response caused me to think a bit. Granted that the pencils will only give you a range. Granted there are more than 4 hardnesses for lead. So, what do you do with your accumulated lead? For the sake of discussion, let's assume your favorite bullet wants to be 12 Brinell. You have a bunch that is 11. Do you bring it to 12 or say, close enough. And how, since the pencil test tells you zip about hardness, do you determine the actual hardness prior to casting? Is it an ongoing process? Do you cast a few, let them settle down and then check the hardness? If so, what is your cutoff point of deviation?

None of my questions are smart-***. I've been reading on this site trying to get a handle. I have calluses where none should ever be. Who'd've thought there was so much to digest. I don't know what I had in my mind- certainly more than casting over a camp fire but certainly less than a metallurgist diploma.

[bangerjim]

DougGuy, your response caused me to think a bit. Granted that the pencils will only give you a range. Granted there are more than 4 hardnesses for lead. So, what do you do with your accumulated lead? For the sake of discussion, let's assume your favorite bullet wants to be 12 Brinell. You have a bunch that is 11. Do you bring it to 12 or say, close enough. And how, since the pencil test tells you zip about hardness, do you determine the actual hardness prior to casting? Is it an ongoing process? Do you cast a few, let them settle down and then check the hardness? If so, what is your cutoff point of deviation?

None of my questions are smart-***. I've been reading on this site trying to get a handle. I have calluses where none should ever be. Who'd've thought there was so much to digest. I don't know what I had in my mind- certainly more than casting over a camp fire but certainly less than a metallurgist diploma.

Reading is good.............too much can be counter productive, as many tend to overthink this very simple process.

Many people seem to get lost in the weeds on this hardness thing. It is not rocket science.

You do not (normally) shoot pure lead out of anything other than black powder ball rifles.

You do not (normally) shoot 22+Bhn out of most guns.

I say "normally", because there will always be somebody out there that just has to do it different!

So a rule I have always used is 9-12 for subsonic and 14-15 for sonic. I now (as thousands on here do) PC everything which pretty much eliminates the "hair-splitting" worry about hardness. The PC provide an excellent protective coating that eliminates leading and the grease smoke you get from grease type lubes. And allows you to shoot softer alloys.........stretching your money on expensive sweetening mixes.

Today BARREL FIT IS KING. Slug your guns. Proven my many avid shooters today. The "olde school philosophy" of hardness kinda went out the window with the modern thoughts/proof we see today.

So, get in the 10-12 ballpark for plinking and shoot 'em! PC them if you are worried about leading. GC anything sonic+ or rifle as long as your boolit is made for GC's.

If you cannot afford a Cabine or Lee tester, the pencils are a darned close result. Bhn is a very relative reading anyway and you will get different readings each time.......all within a range you then average out and call that the hardness for the alloy you are testing. It is sort of a SWAG test even with very expensive lab testing instruments, as the ranges and metals we deal in are so soft and constantly shift with time. With our little testers, we are in the sub basement of the Bhn ranges. The lab tester I have STARTS at 100 and goes up from there. Let's not even talk about the Rockewll hardness ranges. Even on the Mohs (~1.5) and Vickers (~1) scales, we are still in the basement.


Don't overthink it. Get out there and shoot some boolits!

bangerjim

[40-82 hiker]

Reading is good.............too much can be counter productive, as many tend to overthink this very simple process.

Many people seem to get lost in the weeds on this hardness thing. It is not rocket science.

You do not (normally) shoot pure lead out of anything other than black powder ball rifles.

You do not (normally) shoot 22+Bhn out of most guns.

I say "normally", because there will always be somebody out there that just has to do it different!

So a rule I have always used is 9-12 for subsonic and 14-15 for sonic. I now (as thousands on here do) PC everything which pretty much eliminates the "hair-splitting" worry about hardness. The PC provide an excellent protective coating that eliminates leading and the grease smoke you get from grease type lubes. And allows you to shoot softer alloys.........stretching your money on expensive sweetening mixes.

Today BARREL FIT IS KING. Slug your guns. Proven my many avid shooters today. The "olde school philosophy" of hardness kinda went out the window with the modern thoughts/proof we see today.

So, get in the 10-12 ballpark for plinking and shoot 'em! PC them if you are worried about leading. GC anything sonic+ or rifle as long as your boolit is made for GC's.

If you cannot afford a Cabine or Lee tester, the pencils are a darned close result. Bhn is a very relative reading anyway and you will get different readings each time.......all within a range you then average out and call that the hardness for the alloy you are testing. It is sort of a SWAG test even with very expensive lab testing instruments, as the ranges and metals we deal in are so soft and constantly shift with time. With our little testers, we are in the sub basement of the Bhn ranges. The lab tester I have STARTS at 100 and goes up from there. Let's not even talk about the Rockewll hardness ranges. Even on the Mohs (~1.5) and Vickers (~1) scales, we are still in the basement.


Don't overthink it. Get out there and shoot some boolits!

bangerjim

I like what bangerjim said! Boolit diameter based on barrel diamter... Think of the lead this way: normal target velocities for pistol? COWW + 2% tin straight, or 50%/50% with pure lead. BHN? Who cares, it has been proven by the gazillions of rounds. BP? Pure to SOWWs (5 to 8 BHN or so). Mold and shoot. Need to shoot BP cartridge rifles? How about 20:1 (lead:tin). It has a known BHN, but you don't need to know the BHN to cast and shoot it. Just trying to prove the point that if you follow known "recipes", you know the general BHN area you are in for your application. Have fun shooting the lead. Get the headaches and calluses later. Use known metals/alloys for your casting at the start. It's the unknown alloys that drive us nuts and give us calluses and headaches. I still do not use alloys unknown to me. Got enough headaches...

[Steve Marshall]

So my idea of carrying 4 pencils when scrounging isn't so farfetched? I've come across quite a bit of soft lead and more than that of hard. Once I've decided where all my lead is relative to the pencil test, I could blend to make, say 12 BHN? or 10 to 14 and the net result would be good to go for most situations, no? My problem is that I've acquired more than a bit with no idea as to it's hardness. I can't just rap it and tell by the sound. The thumbnail will only get you to about 10? or so. Therefore, the pencils. I have an LBT but that will only tell me after I cast. And powder coating is far, far down the road for me. For my newbie starts, lube will be 45/45/10. And I dassn't argue/disagree with experts, so will muddle down the road with some knowledge and, hopefully, some common sense. Positive to make a few mistakes, but I'll wager every caster did too.

[bangerjim]

PC is cheaper than any grease! And NO LEADING! And is much more forgiving on Bhn than grease.

To get started in PC, all you need is some red HF powder ($3.99 on sale), an old coolwhip bowl, HF long nose pliers, non-stick Al foil, and a toster oven. Not that FAR down the road money-wise!!!!!!!


The above items are bare minimum and will yield nominal PC'd boolits. Once you get the hang of it, you will want better equipment.

Your pencils will get you in the ballpark if you cannot judge hardness on your own. Take them with!

Good luck!

banger

[DougGuy]

Update: I got a set (12) of Marco Raffine pencils: B, 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B, 6B, 7B, 8B, H, 2H, HB, F at a local art supply store. I think I was $8 some out the door. Try your local guy!

Decent price but totally counterpoint to the topic of this thread and the subject to having a uniform reference standard pencil set. The Mars Staedtler pencils are adopted as that reference standard because a guy in Kokomo IN can buy a set in Staples, use them for a tester, and another guy in London could buy a set and have the same reference as the guy in Kokomo.

Just because someone makes and sells a set of pencils that is numbered doesn't mean those numbers (and grades) will match the Mars Staedtler letter for letter. We ALL know how out the window QC is in China and how widely varied the consistency of their mass produced goods can be. The whole point of this testing lead with pencils is so that people around the world can have the same exact reference point using the Mars Staedtler pencils, which removes the variable. Using a different manufacturer's pencils puts the variable right back in there.

You cannot establish a standard by using the same 2b pencil from 30 manufacturers or even 3 manufacturers because chances are 90% of the time, they won't match. The $3 you save by using Taiwan Freddie's cheaper pencils invite more headaches than the money you saved is worth.

So my idea of carrying 4 pencils when scrounging isn't so farfetched?

If you carry the 4 pencils that are in the mean norm of your samples you don't need the whole set. If you skip numbers and the sample falls between two numbers that are 4 grades apart, what is the hardness of your sample? You can't say! You would need the grades between the ones you tested with to correctly answer that question, and without those grades it would be a close guess. That was my point about over simplifying things.

[bangerjim]

Agree. Staedtler brand is the ONLY one to buy, and they do cost from $12-16. Let's not go all cheapash here!!!! Just spend the money. After all, you are squealing out of buying a $160 Cabine tester!

Do not use any thing but the recommended brand because they are repeatable time and time again. Staedtler pencils, so I have been told, have been used by the paint industry for many decades as the field test for paint hardness, so they are made uniformly. Not like brand XYZ you buy on the cheeeeeeep from "your guy" or WalMArt or a swap meet.

bangerjim

[Steve Marshall]

Agreed, I won't know the hardness of the scrounged lead. And until I cast, I won't know the hardness of the bullet. And once I do know, then what? Do I strive to blend and arrive at 10.873 BHN? Or, more likely, I'll end up with , say, 9BHN- 12 BHN. From my, admittedly, limited comprehension, that will probably be close enough for government work.
As to "other" pencils? My gut says, since we really don't know what our alloy is and since I can vary the hardness of my bullets via air-hardening, water quenching and heat treating, the hardness of the pencil probably doesn't matter too much, as long as they are somewhat linear like the Staedtlers, as it is only a tool for the individual caster to make comparative readings.
Something further I would like to know, is blending different hardnesses to arrive at another hardness, were I to combine some 5ish BNH to some 15ish BNH, do I arrive at 10ish BNH? In other words is it a linear process and if I add 1 hardness to another can I divide by two to get a resultant hardness or is there some kind of formula to derive the result?
Thanks

[JWFilips]

Well, you know there is always some guys "bucking" the system! For instance Just "How many (Poor) variation" of "Ben's Red" etc have we seen here. I can go on . You guys came here to learn, well, I don't see much of you learning here recently....just those doing it the way they want to....In that case you all really don't need this forum do you..... Maybe "YouTube will serve you better!"
Well this is ........Just A Big Observational Rant! (Hey maybe we should anagram that "JABOR")

[Lee]

Buy the lead. Buy it now. When you think you have enough, buy twice as much more. Then worry about hardness. I don't care if you bang it on the side of your head. Eventually you grow to recognize "pure" lead from the rest. But when the fruits and nuts ban it, that's when you will wish you had it.

[bangerjim]

Agreed, I won't know the hardness of the scrounged lead. And until I cast, I won't know the hardness of the bullet. And once I do know, then what? Do I strive to blend and arrive at 10.873 BHN? Or, more likely, I'll end up with , say, 9BHN- 12 BHN. From my, admittedly, limited comprehension, that will probably be close enough for government work.
As to "other" pencils? My gut says, since we really don't know what our alloy is and since I can vary the hardness of my bullets via air-hardening, water quenching and heat treating, the hardness of the pencil probably doesn't matter too much, as long as they are somewhat linear like the Staedtlers, as it is only a tool for the individual caster to make comparative readings.
Something further I would like to know, is blending different hardnesses to arrive at another hardness, were I to combine some 5ish BNH to some 15ish BNH, do I arrive at 10ish BNH? In other words is it a linear process and if I add 1 hardness to another can I divide by two to get a resultant hardness or is there some kind of formula to derive the result?
Thanks

Do you have the alloy cal sheet from on here? It takes all the guess work out. Search for it. Put your alloys in and it tells you approx what your hardness is. From my many tests, it is relatively close. But then, who really cares if it is 10 or 11 or 12!

Just acquire any/all lead you can. Worry about the hardness later! You can alway dope it. And do not get lost in the weeds.

banger

[Steve Marshall]

I don't know what my alloys are. What I do know is that I have 900 pounds that when my neighbor cast 5 bullets from, in an hour they tested 71/2 to 8 on an LBT hardness gage. I have about 1100 pounds without a clue as to their hardness, hence, and for future acquisitions, the pencils.

[Steve Marshall]

Well I searched the alloy calculation charts. There are many pages of them. MANY PAGES. Some of you will find this hard to believe, but I am Fred Flintstone worthy on a computer, so couldn't open any of the calculators that offered such. What I did find in the comments were many ways of skinning cats, much to my fear. Why the fear you might ask? Well apparently, I, as a newb, am trying to circumvent centuries worth of acquired knowledge in my haste to just start casting. Never mind the countless hours spent reading. I am somehow to accommodate divergent viewpoints into some sort of controlled atmosphere, never ask a question that might apparently challenge my betters and then just cast in confidence.
On the one hand we get "JABOR" and the very next post we get "Buy the lead. Buy it now.", a philosophy I can comprehend as I have accumulated just over one ton and have yet to cast my first bullet, (my neighbor cast my samples).
As to the pencils, my plan, until I'm told how ineffective, will be to test every bullet I can lay my hands on (with the LBT tester) and cross reference the pencils.

[bangerjim]

I don't know what my alloys are. What I do know is that I have 900 pounds that when my neighbor cast 5 bullets from, in an hour they tested 71/2 to 8 on an LBT hardness gage. I have about 1100 pounds without a clue as to their hardness, hence, and for future acquisitions, the pencils.

Your best bet is to cast an ingot of each of your unknowns and take it to a local scrap yard for an xray read on the make-up. They may do it for free if you buy some stuff. Then you will know and can figure the hardness with the spreadsheet.

Or buddy up with someone on here that can test and send them the ingots. My yards do the test for free with I buy anything, so I ALWAYS have a printout of exactly what I get.

You are a PERFECT candidate for powder coating! PC'ing eliminates the worry about hardness as the PC offers protection and eliminates leading with no lubing. I use ~10-12 for most all pistols and subsonic and 14 or so for rifles.

Fit is king today, not so much hardness.

bangerjim

[DougGuy]

This has been talked about on here I think and if this chart has been posted, excuse the dupe, it's a guide to comparing pencils to BHN that I thought was handy as it gets into the straight Pb+Sn mixes. What it doesn't specify is 50/50 which is ww to Pb, they use range scrap to compare which I guess is closer to pure lead than ww but like everything else, there's the variables. Next trip to the range might yield scrap closer to ww than Pb.

[bangerjim]

Well I searched the alloy calculation charts. There are many pages of them. MANY PAGES. Some of you will find this hard to believe, but I am Fred Flintstone worthy on a computer, so couldn't open any of the calculators that offered such. What I did find in the comments were many ways of skinning cats, much to my fear. Why the fear you might ask? Well apparently, I, as a newb, am trying to circumvent centuries worth of acquired knowledge in my haste to just start casting. Never mind the countless hours spent reading. I am somehow to accommodate divergent viewpoints into some sort of controlled atmosphere, never ask a question that might apparently challenge my betters and then just cast in confidence.
On the one hand we get "JABOR" and the very next post we get "Buy the lead. Buy it now.", a philosophy I can comprehend as I have accumulated just over one ton and have yet to cast my first bullet, (my neighbor cast my samples).
As to the pencils, my plan, until I'm told how ineffective, will be to test every bullet I can lay my hands on (with the LBT tester) and cross reference the pencils.

I do not understand you comment about "all the sheets" of calculators.

I did a search right (the white box at the top right) and the 1st hit was the calc:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...oy-calculators

Dowload the Excel spreadsheet listed (zip file) and plug in your values! Simple as that.

bangerjim

[Steve Marshall]

Not only am I deficient with computers, I have no clue as to the composition of my lead/alloys. So the charts won't help me. How about this: say I have a pound of pure lead say 5BHN and a pound of 12BHN. If I blend them, will I theoretically end up with 2 pounds of 8.5BHN?
(5+12 divided by 2= 8.5)

[bangerjim]

Not only am I deficient with computers, I have no clue as to the composition of my lead/alloys. So the charts won't help me. How about this: say I have a pound of pure lead say 5BHN and a pound of 12BHN. If I blend them, will I theoretically end up with 2 pounds of 8.5BHN?
(5+12 divided by 2= 8.5)

My answer is NO. I have never researched mixing different hardnesses. I do it by % content of alloy.

I just put 1# of 5 and 1# of 12 in the spreadsheet sheet and got 10.1 as an answer. That is pure Pb and COWW's. But the 12 can be reached by several different additives, so it is a guesstimate. If you are using COWW's then 10.1 should be relatively close.

As you can see.............it is NOT linear!!!!!!! So you really DO need to use the spreadsheet!!!

The link I provided is NOT just a set of static charts, but a live Excel spreadsheet that gives you the answers if you put the data in. You can adjust the inputs to arrive at what you need. Very valuable!!!!!! You need Microsoft Excel ( or one of those cheepo open architecture things) to run it.

I know the exact % content of all the lead and alloy stock I have.

Good luck!

bangerjim