Other ways to tell how hard your lead is...
If it's in ingots of a pound or more, drop them on a concrete surface from about waist high. A hard alloy will ring like a bell/tuning fork. Soft lead will hit with a dull thud.
When you melt hard lead, you get a bright shiny surface in the pot. Soft lead will have a definite blue tint.
If you cast enough bullets, you will find the eventual need for a lead hardness tester. I'm told the best ones are made by LBT (never tried), Cabintree (a friend has one and it works well) and Lee. I have the Lee, which is cheap and completely repeatable. The Lee is best used to compare different samples against each other. It does come with a chart that allows you to translate your test results against Brinnell numbers, but as long as I can see it is soft by testing, I don't care what number it is.
If you are a home machinist, you could turn out a simple drop point tool to test lead and compare different lots. Again, you would compare samples to work up a scale like with the Lee.
Bob Anderson
Company C, 1st Michigan Volunteer Infantry
Small Arms Committee
"I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a hand on.
I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."
- John Wayne in "The Shootist", 1976
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