Originally Posted by
Kosh75287
I tried weighted averages to calculate alloy hardness, but I couldn't get it to correlate with actual hardness. It especially gets confusing when the alloy isn't just lead:tin. Add antimony and a little arsenic, and Katy bar the door...
You COULD plot alloy hardness as a function of tin content. 40:1 alloy would be softest, followed by 30:1, then 20:1, then 10:1. This will give rise to a curve, the equation of which can be obtained by least squares, and then the hardness (Y) can be estimated by tin content (X). Anyway, a 10:1 alloy (9.1% tin) will not have a hardness 4 times as great as a 40:1 alloy (2.44% tin), and a 20:1 alloy (4.76% tin) will not have a hardness twice that of 40:1, so I doubt that weighted averages are the answer, here.