Lead Hardness

Curious to your thoughts/opinions on Lead Hardness and it’s importance? Which tester do you use?

I use my thumbnail

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Cabine Tree for me.

being old and cheap, could not see ponying up to expensive testers... tried pencil set and Lee... use Lee, but often frustrated by difficulty in getting consistent reading their lens...sometimes use calipers and jewler's magnifier with lamp... go to ml lead is thumbnail... never fails me...

themoose said:

being old and cheap, could not see ponying up to expensive testers... tried pencil set and Lee... use Lee, but often frustrated by difficulty in getting consistent reading their lens...sometimes use calipers and jewler's magnifier with lamp... go to ml lead is thumbnail... never fails me...

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Me , also and mostly don't worry about hardness . I use mostly 20-1 lead , tin. Of course I don't use Sub or blackhorn , real black.


Works for me all the way to 1000 yd.

ShawnT said:

Cabine Tree for me.

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I use a Cabin tree as well, Lead Hardness can be REALLY important! I have only 1 rifle in my Stable (Stainless .50 Green Mountain LRH Barrel) That ABSOLUTELY requires a little harder Bullet, i have tried several styles of soft pure lead bullets in that Barrel and it simply won’t shoot them worth a darn? But when i bump the hardness up a bit that Rifle ‘Comes Alive!’ That is how i knew that Bullshop Bullets have some hardness in them, my rifle shot them VERY well, I contacted Dan and asked him if he hardens his bullets at all? He told me that he collects plumbers lead, but also keeps the Solder joints, he didn’t feel that would change the hardness? But it must to some degree or this rifle would NOT have shot them so well. I had a mold made from 1 of his bullets, i tried them as pure lead first, my group wasn’t anything like his original bullets? I changed my lead pot out to 40:1 Alloy and my Stainless rifle now shoots them just as good as the original Bullshop bullet. So lead hardness can definitely make a difference, a BIG one!

I'm casting Pure Lead for .500 diameter bullets that I shoot in sabots from my .54cal. The Cabine tree was something our Buddy IdahoRon recommended to me. I got it mostly to check out the scrap lead I had gotten. It all proved not to be pure. I have since fond out that a guy from my club was a Plumber in NY City that uses Lead for the large cast Iron Drain pipes in the Buildings in the city. He brought me about 100lb in bars of pure lead they use. I had LBT make me a a mold that I sort of designed from parts of other bullets. It shoots great.

ShawnT said:

I'm casting Pure Lead for .500 diameter bullets that I shoot in sabots from my .54cal. The Cabine tree was something our Buddy IdahoRon recommended to me. I got it mostly to check out the scrap lead I had gotten. It all proved not to be pure. I have since fond out that a guy from my club was a Plumber in NY City that uses Lead for the large cast Iron Drain pipes in the Buildings in the city. He brought me about 100lb in bars of pure lead they use. I had LBT make me a a mold that I sort of designed from parts of other bullets. It shoots great.

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Ron is who recommended the Cabin tree to me as well, it is an AWESOME tool! I did find some discrepancies in the chart that comes with the ‘new’ Cabin tree units and the old chart before it was sold (Cabin tree was sold to ST Machining, and the chart that comes with the new units today is a very scaled down version, and slightly differs in BHN) Ron emailed me a copy of the Old chart that came with his Cabin Tree from years ago, The tests i have performed show my unit is spot on with the Old chart. The tests I performed were on certified alloy from Buffalo Arms, pure lead, 30:1, and 40:1

I contacted the original owner of Cabin tree and asked him about the difference’s? He didn’t elaborate, but told me if the original chart was working for me that it was available on his website to print copies from