Hmmmm did I miss the election? Starmetal when did you become president of the Aladin fan club? Perhaps it was unanimous by acclamation?

Henry what I was getting at is the difference in grandular structure-- of how the alloy hardens up as it ages up as compared to bullets cast at a lower, less frosted appearance. I should have stated ww alloy though-- which I sorta take for granted around here.

Your tester sounds decent.

After having run off a quantity of 500 gr 3R Lee's I anneal the bullets dead soft. My thoughts are this: are bullets cast out of a very hot mold appearing well frosted of the same hardness during aging and after having aged up as the ones not cast to that degree of frosting?

I think it depends on the alloy. My Lyman manual tells me that bullets don't heat treat harden unless you've got a tiny bit of arsenic in there. I don't know if that goes for annealing and aging. You can test it nonetheless.

I came up with an inexpensive device that will do a for-real Brinell harness test right at your bench.

The standard Brinell hardess test on a lead alloy consists of pressing a 10 mm ball into the alloy with a force of about 200 lb. for a specified length of time and measuring the diameter of the dent you made. Plug that diameter into an equation and you get the Brinell hardness number. You can get the equation out of a Google search; square root signs and fractions don't render well in text-only.*

BHN testers don't start much cheaper than $100, but I built mine for $1.

Go to the dollar store and buy a bathroom scale for $1. If your wife has one, borrow hers. Put the scale on your bench, put the bullet on the scale (a dent made by just starting a 3/8" drill in a piece of scrap wood will steady a 45 caliber bullet nicely). Now, scrounge around in the spare parts kit for your Dillon RL550B reloading press. There is a ball bearing in there that acts as the detent for the shell holder plate. That ball is conveniently 10 mm in diameter. Using a C-clamp, press that ball into the base of your bullet. Four or five layers of duct tape on the frame face of the clamp are helpful to steady the ball. Tighten that clamp down until the bathroom scale reads 200 lb. Get the scale back in the bathroom before your wife notices it's gone, and then measure the diameter of your dent. I played around with some pure lead ingots and hard cast 357 caliber bullet rejects until I was satisfied I was geting consistent results. The literature will tell you that you must draw file or lap and then de-grease the surface you are testing. With or without a drop of Break-Free CLP didn't give me a clear difference between a BHN of 9 and a BHN of 10.

H. C.


*BHN = P/((pi*D/2)*(D-SQRT(D^2 - d^2))) see what I mean?

where P is the load in kg, D is the diameter of the ball in mm, and d is the diameter of the dent in mm)

Other recommendations I've found: the thickness of the piece tested should be at least 10 times the depth of the dent, and the distance from the edge of the dent to the edge of the piece should be at least 2.5 times the diameter of the dent. The latter requirement is difficult to achieve with soft 17 caliber air rifle pellets, but not a problem with 38 caliber bullets.

I would say there is no difference. A bullet cast at, say, 750 degrees might be shiny where a bullet cast at 850 degrees might be frosty. Either way, at 750 degrees, the alloy is a liquid with no granular structure. So as your 850 degree bullet cools in the mould, it reaches 750 degrees at some point, and at that point, it is still liquid. From there, it cools and solidifies the same as the one cast at 750 degrees to begin with. No difference internally, maybe a little oxidation on the surface from being so hot when it was poured.

That's my guess anyway.

H. C.

I hope your correct Henry. Be interasting to test some though...

Aladin, I recently had a conversation with Bill Ferguson of www.theantimonyman.com The jist of the conversation is "No, frosting will not make a bullet harder or softer. Frosting is a result of the different cooling rates of an alloy and the length of time it is in the mold. The grin structures you are refering to are in fact antimony and are called dendrites. There is some question to whether or not these formations can stop the flow of lead through them leaving a surface that is primarily antimony....Bill says no on this. I do notice on my alloy (50-50 wheelweight and linotype) that I see a crystiline structure where the sprue is cut. This is a result of the ally not "freezing" at the same time. Only pure lead and linotype have this property, any other combination of lead/tin/antimony will not chill at the same rate. This is one of the reasons linotype makes such pretty bullets with so little trouble.

Without sounding like a smartass, why not just buy one of Lees hardness testers, I believe they are under $50.00, and for a fellow like ourselves casting up from what ever metal we can scrounge it seems a wise investment. The problem for myself has been this...I have never had a problem with shooting cast boolits that I could attribute to a poor or bad alloy. Mind you that all my shooting experience with cast is at speeds under 1600 fps., so an alloy that may serve me, may not serve others.

JPH45 no problem about the tester idea-- I just have no use for them. I can find the relative hardness of what I'm shooten with a hammer by smashing them. What is really important is their the SAME hardness thorough and the SAME dia's. I heat treat most everything.. just a simple way to uniformity and good accuracy. I had a line on scientific quality tester which did several ranges... but it fell thru.

Lino will heat treat minus the arsenic but that effect degrades rapidly.

Well frosted bullets are harder than their non frosted counterparts otta the mold. Easy to tell.. just size a few of them for comparison and see which ones produce the most reistance going thru.

I've read up on the dendrites etc yrs ago-- but have never heard my original Q answered or addressed. That being more specificly, the grain structure is different than the non frosted.. so do they age harden to a differing degree??? Maybe someone could run the test and see.... testing samples over a period of time.

I'm not sure that I understand just how much difference this could actually make, so please don't begrudge me when I say "I think you are picking the flyspecks out of the horseshit".....

If you could prove there is a definable difference...I think you already have a prediliction toward this "frosted bullets are harder than nonfrosted, just size them the frosted take more energy"....then it is a simple matter to alter your casting/loading regimen to account for the difference you percieve.

If the difference were proven to be negliable or nonexistant, how would this affect your loading????

You are an intelligent fellow, and know that a whack with a hammer will not tell you anything about the true metalurgical nature of the metal sample so struck. It sounds as though you are unwilling to develop a simple method of testing that doesn't require a cash outlay, and that you are also unwilling to make a cash outlay to test your own question. I'm confused, why do you even ask it. Are you hoping that someone else has already figured out your answer? Go to www.theantimonyman.com and email Bill Ferguson. He is a metalurgist that has specialized in lead alloys. I am sure he can answer your question. I do not know if you will like or accept the answer. My apologies if I seem obtuse, I may have misinterpreted your intent.

Thanks for the heads up RL, but all I see when the stupid asshole posts is:

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