Optimum BHN = PSI / (1422 x .90)

[Mitty38]

Let me ask you this. According to the chart and readily available load data, you will need at leas 30K psi to make a hunting load for your .30-06. 10% more for alloy strength is about 33,000 psi. What bhn would that require and would you dare hunt with an alloy that hard?

25 bhn would need a lot of antimony. I doubt you could get it into a usable bullet using tin as a primary hardener. Since antimony is brittle, shot a 33000 psi, I am thinking that it may even create a situation that I have witnessed at the long range where the bullet just disappears in a puff of smoke???
I am assuming if it did make it to the prey , it would create a straight thru hole with no expansion, if you were lucky to hit all soft tissue.
Or if it hit bone it would just leave a wound that would let the deer get completely away, and possibly die a slow agonizing death from infection.

 

[Rick]

25 bhn would need a lot of antimony. I doubt you could get it into a usable bullet using tin as a primary hardener. Since antimony is brittle, shot a 33000 psi, I am thinking that it may even create a situation that I have witnessed at the long range where the bullet just disappears in a puff of smoke???
I am assuming if it did make it to the prey , it would create a straight thru hole with no expansion, if you were lucky to hit all soft tissue.
Or if it hit bone it would just leave a wound that would let the deer get completely away, and possibly die a slow agonizing death from infection.

NO . . . 30BHN is doable with a 2% Antimony alloy, just properly heat treat & quench. As is beneficial as a grain modifier but not a hard requirement. Tin is not the hardener antimony is. However, after several years of experimenting with heat treated bullets I can assure you 30 BHN is NOT needed or desirable, not even in the 454 Cassull.

 

[Ian]

One little problem. Heat-treated hardness does not react the same as alloyed hardness once the bullet gets crunched through the throat. 22 BHN linotype and 22 BHN heat-treated 50/50 wheelweights/pure lead are nothing alike in a .30-caliber barrel. So how do you compute THAT little puzzle? I cast, load, shoot and see what happens. Change one thing if I don't like the results, repeat.

Hardness testing is good for finding one's way back to a load that tested good if you know about what the alloy was made if and have the same stuff to make it again. It is also invaluable when heat-treating to see if you hit your mark or not. But to formularize a load beforehand based only on BHN leaves a lot of good possibilities on the table.

 

[Bret4207]

I know I'm repeating myself, but STOP WORRYING ABOUT BHN!!!! I'm telling you, it's way, way down your list of things to fart around with. Until you get up into the high pressure loads it's just not a big thing. Take what alloy you have, mix up the biggest batch you can to uniform things and start shooting. Again, no offense, but put it out of your mind for now.

Also, on cast and hunting. Cast sometimes expands if there is enough velocity and if it's ductile enough. Ductile is not the same as Bhn soft. Myself, I find a FN design works better than depending on Core-loct type expansion with cast. I'm not the worlds biggest hunter, but if you start with a FN or RFN type of design, you're a few points ahead already.

 

[fiver]

you are if your running the normal 18-1900 fps type stuff.
if you change gears and need to reach 200-250yds. then the smaller meplats and higher velocities start to come into play.

it's that gain loss thing we always see in ballistics coming into play again.
speed up that flat nose and it is suddenly too soft and explosive, slow down the pointed bullet too much and it acts like a FMJ at best and a foil at worst.

 

[Mitty38]

22 BHN linotype and 22 BHN heat-treated 50/50 wheelweights/pure lead are nothing alike in a .30-caliber barrel.

I can understand this now It just clicked.
Relating it to something I know.
I help alloy aluminum at work. It is basically the same Idea.
With Aluminum, Put more copper in it dissipates heat more. More silica it fills out molds better and gets a toughness. Iron, hardness, but too much and brittle, Strontium, it develops a spider web type grain. Ect. Some components can change 2 percent and not effect anything. While others .05 percent can spoil the whole soup. You put too much of any component in, it stops alloying and just kinda floats around in pockets in the mix, or starts absorbing the other elements out of the alloy, again ruining the mix.
One small change can effect how the aluminum handles stress, and moves under stress.
We have 30 different alloys we make, some are very similar, but one slight change makes it more suitable for one customer then another.

Figure Tin has the same effect of a toughness ( a Malleable type of hardness) as silicon has in aluminum.But the antimony and arsenic give it a more ridged- brittle type of hardness.
By controlling the amounts of these and tailoring them to the conditions the bullet is going to be under. We can maximize the effect we are trying to achieve.

I understand that a few lead alloys can get you a long way with many different options and help you get where you want to go. That a lot more than BNH affect how these work.
That fitment is the father of accuracy. Controlling malleability is the best, or at least the easiest way to to achieve the perfect fitment.

We can make up for quite a bit of alloy variance with powder selection, lube ect. Moving this and that around till we get it to work for our individual goal.
But a certain alloy will move better under certain conditions then another.
As you go faster and farther things get more crucial.
It is a game of sacrifices and gains.

 

[Bret4207]

"That malleability is the start of accuracy. " Do you mean the malleability of a lead alloy or the ability to change alloys?

 

[Mitty38]

"That malleability is the start of accuracy. " Do you mean the malleability of a lead alloy or the ability to change alloys?

Changed that sentence a bit just now to say That fitment is the father of accuracy. Controlling malleability is the best, or at least the easiest way to achieve the perfect fitment.
Hope that clears up my train of thought for you.
Of course I do realize also that you have to get the size, shape of the projectile right first, to be effective..

Controlling Malleability of the lead alloy(or finished bullet) to me could be to me as simple as picking a known working alloy. Or tweaking it a bit by adding elements water quench ect.

 

[Mitty38]

Controlling Malleability of the lead alloy(or finished bullet) to me could be to me as simple as picking a known working alloy. Or tweaking it a bit by adding elements water quench ect.

 

[Mitty38]

Sorry for all the late corrections, Had trouble getting my mouth around my mind for a bit. But think I have it all put clear now.

 

[Mitty38]

"That malleability is the start of accuracy. " Do you mean the malleability of a lead alloy or the ability to change alloys?

Oh sorry, to make myself clearer controlling flexibility, conform ability of the bullet.

 

[Bret4207]

You start to catch the idea Grasshopper! The line you had about "fitment" lines up more or less where you want to go, at least for now. But remember, you can do more, easier and much faster with powder and seating depth (and maybe I'd throw sizing in there) than you will worrying about if something is 13 Bhn or 17 Bhn. IOW, you don't need to start with a certain Bhn to get success. You start with whut ya brung to the party and use the easier to use tools you can actually control more effectively. It's a gazillion times easier to alter a powder charge or seating depth than it is to add 1.863% of this or that to your alloy. Let me give you another thought since you're talking mallebility- Why do so many people work like slaves to produce visibly perfect castings(Think Bens bullets!) from an alloy that is custom blended of virgin materials, weigh them out to .1 gr maybe, size them in custom nose first dies to half a thou, lube them with exotic lubes that involve something just short of witchcraft and human sacrifice, load them into neck reamed, fire formed cases that all come from a specific lot, uniform the primer pockets, load with weighed charges produced on a computer assisted machine, store them for a specified period of time to allow them to age harden to a specific Bhn and size, carefully insert them into a match barreled rifle and then blast the living bejeezus out of the bullets and turn them into putty so that they can "obturate"? If you're gonna piss pound them into the throat they why worry about what they looked like or what size they were beforehand? And yet, that's some of the "sage advice" we've been given and still are given. And the thing that really screws us up? It works a lot of the time!!!

Look at the top of this page. There's "The Art" and then there's "the Science". 2 different things. It'll make your life easier if you remember you don't get the whole enchilada in this game unless you pay attention to both sides of that equation!

 

[fiver]

why and what they look like to begin with is the when you want to change the alloy.

it took me years to start figuring out that alloy and bullet design actually have a relationship.
I seen all the ''use linotype to go 2000 fps.'' recommendations, and then done over 2-K with almost the polar opposite alloy.
then contradicted myself once again by taking a known target bullet and making it more accurate just by hardening the alloy. [maybe could have got there another way too? pretty sure I could]
confusing and confounding until you pay enough attention and really look for trends and patterns.

 

[Bret4207]

What did Bass say Fiver? "It doesn't matter, until it does." It makes zero sense to me to start with concerns over Bhn from an unknown alloy when you don't even know if the bullet you're going to try is fat enough to even begin to have a chance in your gun, much less if the bullet and gun will get along at all. Tell you one thing though, the whole Bhn idea sure sells easy.

 

[fiver]

and to your average consumer it's a lot easier sell than trying to explain static and mechanical fitment,
rebound, malleability and ductility.

when I was making and selling cast bullets my biggest hurdle was explaining why I chose a 1.5% tin and 3% antimony alloy for most things, but was using a 4% tin and 6% antimony alloy for a couple of others.
they all wondered why I didn't just offer the same 2/6 alloy the other 2 or 3 guys at the show was using.
once I had my bullets in their guns I built up a very steady stream of return customers and could just about bring in only what I was going to sell each day instead of hauling in boxes and crates of stock.

 

[Rally]

What label did you sell under Lamar? Just wondering if I used any of your bullets.

 

[JWFilips]

when I was making and selling cast bullets my biggest hurdle was explaining why I chose a 1.5% tin and 3% antimony alloy for most things, but was using a 4% tin and 6% antimony alloy for a couple of others.
they all wondered why I didn't just offer the same 2/6 alloy the other 2 or 3 guys at the show was using.
once I had my bullets in their guns I built up a very steady stream of return customers and could just about bring in only what I was going to sell each day instead of hauling in boxes and crates of stock.

Man I would jump on that real fast! "Fiver" Cast bullets!

 

[fiver]

I doubt they made it that far east.
I think some of my stuff got down into California and up into Montana and all along that area.
I run Cox's custom Bullet's and lead casting, this was back in the 90's up until I moved to Idaho in the early 2000's.

odd thing was I got quite a few requests to make silver bullets for people.
if they brought me the silver I would make them a pair or however many bullets they wanted.
it would take me quite a bit of Mapp gas to melt the alloy down so it wasn't really cheap.

 

[Rally]

Doesn't ring a bell with me Lamar. Thought maybe, I could have seen some in my travels, but I'd been casting my own before that, so didn't pay that much attention either. Used to order bulk packed Winchester and Remington pistol bullets out of that place in Valentine, Ne about then. Can't even remember the name of it! I was even there once while attending a trappers convention too! Lock, Stock and Barrel maybe was the name?

 

[fiver]

I recall that name.

a box of them pops up from time to time on craigs list or the like somewhere up and down the Wasatch front.
when it does it seems like my dad still gets a phone call from someone since he still has the same secondary number on the box tag.
I think he sold off all our old stock from something like that happening during the Obama admin.
he called me first and I told him to just double the book marked price on everything, the buyer didn't even bat an eye and paid in cash.
if I'd have known that fiasco was coming I never would have opened shop I would have just made and boxed bullets for 15 years and dumped everything on the market during the big rush.