41 mag bullet hardness

[gspman]

I dont cast yet but was digging through my reloading stuff and found a box of 215 grn swc for my 41 mag.Was loading them with 7grns of unique for a light load .These were purchased from burgess bullets like 10years ago.They are sized 411 dia and says alloy is 7% ant and 2% Tin.They appear to be as hard as the missouri bullets i have at 18bhn. How hard do you think they are??Been shooting Jacketed bullets with full power loads.thinking i would like to speed these up.I know nothing about lead alloy and casting So i appreciate your thoughts on this.thanks GSPMAN

[bumpo628]

Rotometals has a formula for estimating air-cooled hardness:
Brinell = 8.60 + ( 0.29 * Tin ) + ( 0.92 * Antimony )
According to that, the hardness should be between 15 to 16.

However, Hardball alloy has a similar composition at 2% Tin and 6% Antimony and it has a Brinell hardness of 16. So, it stands to reason that your alloy should be about 17 if they were air-cooled.

Water dropping can raise WW hardness from 12 to 18, so there is really a wide range of hardnesses that it could be based on how it was made.

[lwknight]

So many people here have proven that hard cast bullets are not required for handguns.
I cast almost everything with 2-6-92 (hardball) which should be about 15 bnh and have had great luck both at full magnum and plinking loads.

One thing that I did learn is that when I'm using hard bullets , I get best accuracy with only 1/1000 over bore size. You can go more with softer bullets.

I have cast some softer bullets for hunting and get a little leading problem but , I figure that I will not fire very many while hunting so a little leading is no big deal.

[sqlbullet]

That alloy you can push them as hard as you want in 41 mag as long as they fit the bore.

[gspman]

Thank you all for the input.I am going to try them with 2400 and see what happens.Thanks again .GSPMAN