Bnh hardness standards?

[bangerjim]

Has anyone ever found a set of bnh hardness standards for the very low ranges we use as boolit casters? My big tester starts at 100 and goes too over 600 or so. And I have 3 standards with it to verify everything when it needs it. Not NIST anymore but my company does not do "gubmit" work!

It would be nice if someone could provide for sale to us a set of 3 or 4 verified small ingots with the REAL bnh test and number stamped on one side. That would take all the "gestimates" out of what everybody talks about here.

Since we deal in the basement of the bnh scale (5-22), a set of (inexpensive) standard blocks would sure be a welcome offering. If you are like me, you are always wondering if your eyeball or measurment or chart is really correct. And having hunks of "almost/just about/sort of" a know hardness really sucks.

I know it is not really a critical number, but seem like everybody worries about it and spends a lot of thread mileage discussing it on this forum.

Please post your thoughts/knowkedge/ideas on this!

:coffeecom bangerjim

[btroj]

Doesn't matter if the BHn is dead on. I want repeatable results. If my tester says 8 and it is 10 then I don't care. I just want to know that 8 today is 8 tomorrow.

[RobS]

btroj nailed it. As long as you are in the ball park so to speak and your method of testing is consistent/repeatable then you can work the alloy to your needs. As a starter you can get yourself straight lead which is around 4-5 BHN (actually 4.2 BHN IIRC)

[John Boy]

Buy whatever alloy you want from Rotometals and use as a standard ... http://www.rotometals.com/Bullet-Casting-Alloys-s/5.htm
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YpeUQUs0cecfUzLhS0ngpQSDRUhsiXDNRAU9sMKxlRM/pub

Alternative ... Buy a hardness tester for your home use!

[GLL]

Kind of following the btroj and John Boy plan.
I made up my own hardness “scale” using the Cabine Tree tester and its dial readings/Bhn scale. This was done using certified metals and alloys plus my own mixtures. I am not so much worried about absolute hardness values as I am reproducing measured results of my own alloys.
I used, pure lead, pure tin, 50/50 and 60/40 Pb-Sn solder, 10:1 and 20:1 Pb-Sn alloys, LYMAN #2 90,5,5), Linotype, Rotometals Superhard 70/30 Pb/Sb, and my own alloys of 95,2.5,2.5, and custom-mixed “WW”.

If I make an alloy and the dial reading is off I can go back and see where I may have made an error in calculations.

Jerry

[sqlbullet]

A uniform standard is only useful if the rest of the process is equally uniform in definition.

For instance, a 10mm barrel would always slug .400"±.0002". A 38/357 barrel would be .357"±.0002"

Powder burn rates would not vary more than ±.25% between lots. Same with primers and case capacity. And chamber size and throat and leade.

But none of these other items are standard to the degree needed to make a bhn standard particularly useful to the home caster. It is still going to boil down to a set of guidelines and safety limits and then derive what works for your gun(s) empirically.

And for that purpose, relative testing is fine, so any method works fine for a given user as long as it is consistent.