Quote Originally Posted by My 3 Sons View Post
I’ve seen Lee’s tester for about $80 but I’m trying to control costs. How do you test your lead for the proper hardness?
Me and a buddy that cast together bought a Lee tester a few years ago, before that I cast / shot bullets for years without one. I pretty much knew what I had lead wise as it was either pure lead, wheel weights, Lino or Mono type lead and knowing roughly the BHN of those alloys it was pretty easy to mix up a batch of alloy to cast the desired range of BHN I was looking for. Water quenching or heat treating certain lead alloy has predictable results as well, but if you don't know what you have to begin with it's hard to know what your going to end up with.

Some good reference material.
http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

Lead alloy calculator, works with any EXCEL spreadsheet program. I've found the final BHN to be fairly close when using the spreadsheet to mix up different alloys.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/atta...4&d=1341560870