Hard Boolits???

[beng]

I cast .358/9 and .459 boolits. I have came across at times, "My rifle likes hard boolits" I know how to test the hardness, but what WILL make them harder?

[RobS]

WW bullets you can water quench right out of the mold for 20 ish BHN depending on how hot your alloy is that you cast with.

The other option is to heat treat which is where you put the bullet in an oven for an hour or so at a certain temp and then take the bullet out and quench in a container of water. Depending on what temp you heat the bullets to determine how hard they will be. WW bullets again are a good candidate for this as there is antimony in the alloy.

If you want to go straight Lino alloy then you'll be able to reach a hardness of 20 but will have a real brittle bullet.

You can sweeten up plain lead or WW bullets with a bit of tin and reach a harder BHN as well.

I don't know how hard you want to make your bullets but this info would help us figure out what approach to give you for advise.


Here is a good read:
http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

[44man]

I cast .358/9 and .459 boolits. I have came across at times, "My rifle likes hard boolits" I know how to test the hardness, but what WILL make them harder?
Tougher is a better description.
I do not like a brittle boolit.
My favorite mix is 20# of WW's, 6.4 oz of tin and 9.6 oz of antimony.
I water drop but oven hardening will make them harder.
You can go harder for a rifle but if you hunt with the gun you do NOT want hard lead.
For deer a mix of 50% WW's and 50% pure, water dropped, is good.
For a hollow point I would use 25% pure and 75% WW's.

[Bass Ackward]

Hard and soft are dubious terms. And you will see people all over the place on this issue. So there is definitely more than one way to skin a cat.

If you lube starve a bullet based upon what you are doing, then yes, a harder bullet is going to do better because it requires less. Same if you use a marginal lube. Same as going to a slower powder. Or a bad throat or poor rifling height.

Very simply, a hard bullet compensates for errors in other areas. Same thing as a GC only a GC does a little more.

In order to preserve my ego, I like to refer to this as .... adding flexibility. :grin:

In the end, you simply have to try different things to be astounded that there are different ways to do cast. Learn to do one way right for that particular gun and results will be very good. Nothing is guaranteed to work all the time. It's what makes this fun. Well .... sometimes. :grin:

[Edubya]

There is thread about alloying a small % of copper into your alloy that might get you what you want. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=86682

EW