If you have a lead hardness tester please get in touch with me.

[randyrat]

WOW my Lee tester read real hard, i wonder if somthing is wrong with my tester...Now, dang it, i'm waiting for Christmas eve like the rest of you. i tested the nose and the side, i still ended up with a high BHN.

[yammerschooner]

In order to head off follow up emails that are beginning to come in, below is a list of cities I am waiting to hear back from. As you can see, I am almost there. I should have had more foresight and replied as I worked through IMs and emails, and apologize for the inconvenience. As it stands, a couple of IMs had to be deleted to make room at castboolits and glockpost, so I don't have a good idea of who I have communicated with.

I am only missing info from folks in the following cities. So far I have collected 473 points of data that I will use directly, and much more that may or may not have bearing as others look over it. The below constitutes tests for 6 more batches of 10.

Dublin
Soda Springs
Mission Viejo
LaVerne
and the gent at the lab who has been kind enough to work me in.

I expect to hear back from the lab gent on Wednesday. The testing is done, it just needs to be measured. Since he is a busy man, it is possible there may be a slight delay.

Thanks for all of your patience folks. I know this is a long time coming, but I want to do it right.

As a heads up, I may get sidetracked with my full-time real job. Although it may slow me down a little, I intend to get numbers up as soon as I have them gathered, sorted, and figured out a couple of initial comments on them. A full write up will probably not happen until well after the numbers are posted and my kids have been released for the summer.

Please believe me when I say that the bulk of the waiting is over on this.

[Newtire]

Newtire....Your findings are quite different than mine. I'm wondering if we all got the same hardness boolits or if some were intentionally different??? Seems strange that we could be 8 BHN points apart Anxiously awaiting the results from Lance

Hi mtn. My tester is the Lee one. I pushed down until the center pin was level & then read the results. I found what looked like 2-distinct hardnesses. I don't know what your results were?

[Bill*]

Hi Newtire
I used a lee also. How did you measure the 30 second hold? Did you just guess or time it? I'm wondering how much variance there could be if it was held for say a few seconds either way. I timed it but it wasn't easy keeping the projection level with a Lee hand press while watching a clock....next time I'll clamp it to a table or something

[Alchemist]

WOW my Lee tester read real hard, i wonder if somthing is wrong with my tester...Now, dang it, i'm waiting for Christmas eve like the rest of you. i tested the nose and the side, i still ended up with a high BHN.

What he said....only I have a Saeco. I came up with a very high hardness level, and was a little concerned that my tester was out of whack. I'm checking in here daily (at least) to see how the data is progressing.

We must all be like little kids at Christmas.

Alchemist

[45nut]

I came up with a very high hardness level, and was a little concerned that my tester was out of whack.

Wow, I wasn't the only one with a real high reading?
I have a LBT, followed the directions as closely as possible but came up with what I thought were extremely hard results.

BTW,, my LBT is still up for sale,, $75.00 shipped

[mtnwinds]

Newtire, my results were very uniform across the 10 boolits I tested. The hardness came out to BHN 23-24, the equivalent to water quenched wheel weights....fairly hard.

My Cabintree measures via a dial indicator and my reading went from .092 to .0935 for the 10 boolits.

I'm not aware of any request that we not post our results....if there is, I'm sorry!

[Rick N Bama]

My 10 boolits measured with my Cabine Tree from a low of .091" to a high of .094" which puts all 10 in the 23-24BHN range. FWIW, 6 of my boolits measured at .093" Very uniform in my opinion. I tested them just as they came out of the package, no filing or any other prep work.

Rick

[randyrat]

Hi Newtire
I used a lee also. How did you measure the 30 second hold? Did you just guess or time it? I'm wondering how much variance there could be if it was held for say a few seconds either way. I timed it but it wasn't easy keeping the projection level with a Lee hand press while watching a clock....next time I'll clamp it to a table or something

I held mine with a steady hand,steady as a rock Dang i counted 32 (seemed like forever) seconds. I know if the button goes over you have to start over on a different spot. I don't think the numbers will change unless you go under 30 seconds.

[yammerschooner]

I'm not aware of any request that we not post our results....if there is, I'm sorry!

No request of that kind at all. High test value from you all was 35 and low was 10.5. Most testers grouped together. As pointed out by one of you in their notes, it is likely they have different sweet spots.

I will have something to measure them against soon. I will probably have one or two questions for a few of you afterwards.

[Bill*]

Randyrat;
Did you by any chance come close to BHN 22? I'm curious to see if the Lees come out near each other (I think that may tell me more than if they get close to the true hardness number)

[NSP64]

I have a lee tester and I adjust the die so the indicator is flush with the ram all the way up, so I can't overcompress it. And I use a stop watch to time. BTW all my samples tested at BHN 24.8

[Springfield]

24 seems kinda high since I could mark these bullets with my fingernail. For reference I can't make a mark on commercial smokeless bullets like Lasercast. Seems like I remember Linotype is about 22 and they sure don't use that for their bullets. When I test dead soft lead I get 4 on my LBT and my 50/1 lead tin BP bullets come out at 11. Be interesting to see if different brands are consistent with each other but different than other types/brands.

[ANeat]

I used a Lee tester and a different microscope to measure the dent. The majority of mine were 26bhn with one at 24.8 and 3 at 27.2.

So it looks like at least a few of the Lee's are in the same ballpark. Considering any operator differences and how close the spring may or may not calibrated it sounds pretty consistent.

Remember were only talking .001 difference one way or another.

I figured Yammer should have thrown a ringer in the mix. Something either softer or harder by a large margin and see if everyone would catch it....

[NSP64]

24 seems kinda high since I could mark these bullets with my fingernail. For reference I can't make a mark on commercial smokeless bullets like Lasercast. Seems like I remember Linotype is about 22 and they sure don't use that for their bullets. When I test dead soft lead I get 4 on my LBT and my 50/1 lead tin BP bullets come out at 11. Be interesting to see if different brands are consistent with each other but different than other types/brands.

Man you got some tough fingernails, mine won't scratch!! He may have sent different people in the groups different lead composition boolits?

[randyrat]

Randyrat;
Did you by any chance come close to BHN 22? I'm curious to see if the Lees come out near each other (I think that may tell me more than if they get close to the true hardness number)

No mine weighed inbetween 28.5 and 29 something. I'm waiting to find out how screwed up my tester is. I still have this feellin something is haywire/gremlins with my tester. I have a few gremlins in the area they are 6,7,8 yrs old. i've never caught them in my gun room,but if they are like me when i was young,well you know,but i'll never know,they are smarter than the old man.

[LeadThrower]

My Lee measured very consistently, averaging about 23.5. I used a stopwatch held right next to the indicator so I had no trouble keeping the indicator flush for 30 seconds.

[Bill*]

Newsmokepole:
That's a great Idea, Trust you wont mind I steal it? As an old guy I used to work with would say... "Thank you to small pieces"

[NSP64]

Any totals yet, It's 5am christmas morning

[mtnwinds]

It's noon now.....yawnnnnnn....and there isn't a single present under the tree.

Hey, all you Cabintree guys & gals! Care to post your results? Mine were .092 -- .0935. Very uniform, I thought.