Alloy Question - Too Soft?

[kend]

I got my hands on a bucket of ww and poured ingots, after a week or so of them sitting my Cabinetree hardness tester arrived so I checked the hardness on one of the ingots after practicing on some bullets I had. It came in at just under 9 bhn, will this be too soft for a handgun bullet at roughly 950 fps?

[lwknight]

I think not too soft. 950 fps is easy to cast for.

[onondaga]

I bet the number will be different when you test cast bullets. Ingot hardness can run all over the place depending on how they were cooled.

WW alloy generally has antimony so it responds well to heat treating. If BHN 9 isn't hard enough, you could likely bring it up 14 -15 by heat treating bullets 1 hour at 350 F. on a cookie sheet then dumping them in a bucket of ice water.

Gary

[Lloyd Smale]

at those speeds it should work fine.

[kelbro]

Inspired by 357Shooter, I have been working with some soft alloys lately (6-7BHN) in 357 around those velocities and seeing very good accuracy.

[Springfield]

I use my Blackpowder alloy(9-10 Brinell tested) for my wife's smokeless cowboy guns and they work fine. I use the same alloy for my cast 45 acp loads, also no leading and good accuracy.

[jbelder]

I got my hands on a bucket of ww and poured ingots, after a week or so of them sitting my Cabinetree hardness tester arrived so I checked the hardness on one of the ingots after practicing on some bullets I had. It came in at just under 9 bhn, will this be too soft for a handgun bullet at roughly 950 fps?

Ingots run a lot softer when testing!