Bullet hardness question lead pipe

[catkiller45]

Ok heres the deal...I just melted down some lead pipe....I made 4 bullets just to check the hardness of the pipe...With my Saeco tester it reads around 7 which is in the high range..I also have one of Lee's new testers and that shows it off the chart as being pretty soft..It only goes so far...Which one do I believe now?

My play is to make some 30 to 1 alloy for my black powder rifles......I which I could get me another tester,but right now what I have will have to do....Thanks,John

[Boerrancher]

You should be fine at a 30 to 1 (assuming the 1 is tin), but if you are worried about that being too soft go to a 20 to 1. To give you a helpful hint, 22 LR rim fire bullets are made of pure lead. They travel around 1200- 1300 fps. Unless you have found a way to get super velocities out of your smoke poles I don't think you will have any problems with your plans.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

[DLCTEX]

From my limited experience with lead pipe I'd say the Lee gave the most accurate reading. All that I have encountered were close to pure lead. If I drop the ingots on a concrete floor they "clunk", while WW ingots "ring". To my ear the pipe ingots sound the same as plumber's lead. DALE

[kir_kenix]

All the pipe lead I have melted down has been very soft. My guess would be that your Lee tester is closer to the truth on this instance. Only way to check your results (correct hardness, sizing, etc) is to shoot and see :) .

Lucky for us, shooting is the fun part of it all.

[Tom Herman]

All of the pipe I've run into so far (either plumbing or electrical sheathing) has been soft. See if you can easily scratch it with your finger nail.

Happy Shootin'! -Tom

[Hardcast416taylor]

After being a plumber for over 35 yrs., I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the pipes are very soft (pure) lead. They had to be soft so we could either flare the ends to join, make angle turns and of course solder them together. So the chance of your pipes being hardened is very small or not at all. A favorite saying among we plumbers is that crap doesn`t run uphill, so don`t look in a plugged pipe! Robert :groner:

[EDK]

Ok heres the deal...I just melted down some lead pipe....I made 4 bullets just to check the hardness of the pipe...With my Saeco tester it reads around 7 which is in the high range..I also have one of Lee's new testers and that shows it off the chart as being pretty soft..It only goes so far...Which one do I believe now?

My play is to make some 30 to 1 alloy for my black powder rifles......I which I could get me another tester,but right now what I have will have to do....Thanks,John

Look at the scale on the SAECO tester closely with a boolit in it and then look at the instruction sheet. There is an area that reads a "minus" meaning dead soft. Figure 7 on the instruction sheet for mine shows this reading of 7 as "SAECO -3."

You could have also melted the wiped joints (tin alloy) and the hardness reading is valid.

Scratch it with a thumb nail and compare to a known hardness boolit or ingot as suggested. Then use the alloy for pistols or plinking if you are still uncertain.

:Fire::redneck::castmine:

[Shuz]

One caveat with the Saeco tester is that it requires a boolit type slug to give a reading. If a person doesn't get his mould up to temperature, he could be, in effect, quenching the sample he is measuring, thus getting a higher than normal reading. Been there...done that with mine!