Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns HARD CAST BULLETS

In keeping with the terms Super Hardcast, Hardcast, Medium Hardcast and Soft Cast what of the three constituents Lead, Antimony and Tin do you utilize in your casting constituency and the percentages,
Do you ever water quanch your bullets to get them harder? Do you drop them hot into the water or do you let them cool then push them into the water?
What Brendle Hardness do you achieve for?
I want some Super Hardcast for my 44 Special loads for great penertration.
I am casting the 250 Keith but already know I am handicapped with them with the smallish meeplate.
Thanks in advance

I used straight clip on wheel weights and water quenched then immediately out of the mold to achieve 22 to 24 brinel.

That was years ago and today's glue on weights are soft, not sure about the modern clip on weights

I've never felt the world would be better of if cast bullets were dead, so I've never quanched a cast bullet. I have however, water quenched a lot of them.

Your alloy needs to have some antimony and/or arsenic to harden. Pure lead or pure lead/tin alloys don't harden from water quenching.

Range scrap will usually go from a 8-10 BHN to 16-18 BHN in my experience. I shoot a lot more range scrap now than wheel weights. Wheel weights are hen's teeth anymore. The last wheel weights I water quenched fell right in with jwp475's findings, 22-24. I often alloy my range scrap 50/50 with linotype. They water quench 25-30.

I'm not familiar with the Brendle hardness scale. Is it more accurate than the Brinell scale? If so where do I find a scale or can my LBT hardness tester be re-calibrated to read Brendle?

What's a brendle? Bulldog, Boxer? No, that would be brindle. Ah, hardness. That's brinell or metapascals, dumbass. If you're gonna troll, don't hook your own lip when casting.

Who knew penertration and meeplate were connected.............

One of the old-timers will be along shortly to tell you..

Stop making sense.

Lol.

I'd post something, but it would amount to this in different words.

I've played with a lot of different alloys with lots of different additives in lots of different ratios. Good fun. I like to experiment. I find I'm using more tin than antimony in bullets for hunting purposes, and I like a bit of arsenic in everything. I also water-drop almost everything. Just because. With some alloys it makes little difference, but it keeps the bullets contained and not able to burn me.

For handguns and some lever action rifles, I use clip on wheel weights with 2% tin added. I have experimented with both water quenching and heat treating these bullets, but usually find it unnecessary for most of my uses.

Just to add, if you’re going “super hard cast” in .44 Special, you’ll want to be mindful of your bullet diameter, throat size, bore diameter, load pressure relationships to ensure adequate obturation and avoid excessive leading.

As long as your cylinder throats are not under size and your bullets are the size of your bore or larger they will work perfectly and there is no need to obturate. A "hard" cast will not obturate at 44 special pressure.

Agreed and understood. In my mind, those are all factors of the same equation though, so I sort of lump them all together.