Brinell Hardness- Important?

Have about 50 pounds of lead, wheel weights, and boat ballast from keels. Put a lot of it into Lyman ingot forms.

I am ready to start casting since I have all the tools. Plan to use coating and not lube.

The question to me remains is hardness really important, somewhat important or not at all.

I will use these rounds for training and plinking. I am not concerned with putting 10 rounds into the same hole. Or any accuracy even close to that.

Just want to be safe, make a round that goes boom and stay safe throughout the process.

Boat ballast, from my experience, tend to be soft, close to pure lead. Meanwhile, clip on wheel weights are a bit harder falling somewhere between 10 and 12 bhn.

With a non gaschecked and PCed boolit I regularly shoot at "factory magnum" levels out of my .44 mag. Meaning a 250gr or 265gr boolit at about 1250fps with zero leading and great accuracy. Once I get above 1300fps my accuracy degrades very rapidly. Now my gas checked 250gr PCed boolit, well, I run that in the 1500fps range with zero accuracy loss with straight COWW.

If I'm using pure lead, I've found my max velocity for a PCed boolit to be right around 1000fps without a gas check, and just over 1100fps with a gas check.

One thing to always keep in mind is that boolit fit is king. .001"-.002" over groove size is ideal.

If you are loading for the basic service calibers, a 50/50 mix of the two leads, loaded in a heavier for caliber boolit will serve you well. (124gr and up for 9mm, 170gr and up in .40 S&W, 200 and up in .45ACP, 140gr and up in .357 with a mid range load, etc)

Don't be afraid of going to the hardware store and buying a pound of solder to mix in your pot to help with fill out. About a 3ft strip will do wonders if you're having trouble getting proper fill.

If you want to try a little bit of extra tin to see if it does what you want, just go down to Walmart and pick up a small bag lead free tin splitshot sinkers. Just a couple size #7's added to a pound of your lead will tell you a lot. My experience with boat ballast is a little different. Usually it is soft but sometimes it gets really weird suitable only large fishing sinkers. Since you already have made some Lyman ingots from your lead drop on on concrete. If it rings, it is hard, and if it thuds, it is soft. My favorite alloy only rings a tiny bit since it is only slightly hard.

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Originally Posted by quilbilly

If you want to try a little bit of extra tin to see if it does what you want, just go down to Walmart and pick up a small bag lead free tin splitshot sinkers. Just a couple size #7's added to a pound of your lead will tell you a lot. My experience with boat ballast is a little different. Usually it is soft but sometimes it gets really weird suitable only large fishing sinkers. Since you already have made some Lyman ingots from your lead drop on on concrete. If it rings, it is hard, and if it thuds, it is soft. My favorite alloy only rings a tiny bit since it is only slightly hard.

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Hmm, interesting! I scavenged some ballast lead off of an old wrecked sailboat that has been setting on the shore of a lake for as long as I can remember. No telling how old that thing was, and I can't believe nobody got it out before I did.

I'm not trying to hijack, I just always thought ballast were all made from pure.

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Originally Posted by gifbohane

Have about 50 pounds of lead, wheel weights, and boat ballast from keels. Put a lot of it into Lyman ingot forms.

I am ready to start casting since I have all the tools. Plan to use coating and not lube.

The question to me remains is hardness really important, somewhat important or not at all.

I will use these rounds for training and plinking. I am not concerned with putting 10 rounds into the same hole. Or any accuracy even close to that.

Just want to be safe, make a round that goes boom and stay safe throughout the process.

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BHN is something to know, but is way down the list of importance.
One "kind of important" thing, is to have your alloy all the same, this isn't a safety issue...BUT, if you cast some 357 mag boolits with WW's one day, then the next day cast a bunch more 357 mag boolits with Boat ballast alloy,,, then load them all in one batch for ammo with the same load, you will likely have inconsistent accuracy.

In most handgun applications, most worry too much about bhn imo. I use a lot of range scrap or pure lead alloyed with some lino or clip ww for most handgun shooting needs. Especially with coated, never leading issues & accurate enough for even 100yd shooting, my scoped RBHH.
The issue with mystery metal like boat ballast, you don't know what it is, could be zinc or mixture of lead/zinc. If it melts & flows at a modest temp of say 650, its probably going to make decent bullets. If they cast close to what the stated weight is, they are probably harder than pure, if heavier than stated, more lead. Good coating removes the bhn variable for handgun stuff below 1200fps or so, below 30kpsi, imo. Proper size is still the king.

If it is too hard, the bullets might not obturate enough to engage the rifling, which will greatly effect accuracy. If it is too soft, it could potentially leave lead deposits in the rifling, which will also effect accuracy as well as create other problems.

If you want consistency, you want a number.
BHN does give you that number.

But for plinking/low-moderate loads, you want moderately soft
and thumbnail-scratch test will do -- especially PC'd.

I’ll monitor the bullet weight. Check a bullet you like for hardness and weigh it. Add what you need to the pot to get the same bullet weight.

Rifle or hand gun? Rifles are more forgiving, in my experience.

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Originally Posted by waksupi

Rifle or hand gun? Rifles are more forgiving, in my experience.

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Sorry, left out that I will be using it for 9mm handgun (S & W) M & P. Plan to make them 124 grains.

For what it's worth, I'm running several 147gr bullet moulds, plain-based, Lyman#2
SIG, Walther, S&W, Glock
Powder coat, size to .357, and you'd be fine.

In my opinion, hard boolits are better. I drop ALL my cast boolits from the mold into a bucket of cold water. I size, lube with Alox and get no leading and great accuracy. All my rifle and handgun boolits are water quenched.

Adam

Get the alloy calculator, figure what you have BHN-wise. YOu probably need something like 10 or 11 for the 9mm. WD won't work from the mold, drop in cold water after cooking the PC for 1/2 hr.

I was faced with a similar problem-- about 700 lbs of various kinds of lead alloy I got from a friend. I had a few bars of Lyman #2 and tested it against that. Literally, what I did was squeeze a ball bearing between the Lyman bar and the unknown stuff. I looked at the ball bearing dent. A dent larger than the lyman dent (softer) went in one pile and dents smaller (harder) went in the other pile. I used the softer pile for handgun bullets and the harder pile for rifles. Its all gone now, but I never had leading or accuracy issues with either.