Originally Posted by
Bret4207
Threads like this bring out the cynic in me. Not because I don't believe what anyone is saying, but because other people will take whats written and try and make it a "rule" or use it to justify their position which my be incorrect for a number of reasons. Worse yet, they'll use this as ammo to spread disinformation and harm the incredible gains we've made here over the past 15 years or so. I think Bass put it best- hardness matters only when it does. If the the OP author can reproduce those groups on demand over a wide range of conditions, THEN my friend you have a clear winner.
357- That's an interesting theory. My first question would be- how many guns have you observed this in and how many alloys have you used? If it's just one gun/alloy then it only holds true for THAT gun/alloy, no offense intended. If it's 2-3 guns/alloys then you have a working theory. When you can get 20-40 other guys to reproduce your observations across a wide variation on guns/alloys/designs/powders/etc. then you get into the "fact" area. I mean absolutely no disrespect or offense, but I have been guilty of stating a few "facts" in rather strong terms myself only to end up realizing I wasn't as right about things as I thought. I hope you ARE right, finding some rules to this game beyond "fit is king" would be very helpful.
I would tend to agree over all, in a general way, that "hardness matters", but in a limited way (is that non-comital or what?!) . That is, hardness ( talk about ambiguous terms, 15.4 Bhn is almost dead soft to some people!!!) is part of the boolits dynamic fit. Fit remains King and comes first. That's the one true fact in the game as far as I can tell.
BTW- I tried to get an agreement on definitions for "hardness" a while back. I thought it would be helpful to clear the air of just what people mean when they say soft, medium, hard, really hard, etc. There was practically no interest in defining terms. The one thing we did discover is that those who responded felt "hard" ran from about 15 Bhn to well over 30 Bhn. That's a pretty wide range to use and have people understand what you mean.