[georgeld]

When I was a kid and things were so cheap it'd give these younger guys a heart attack just to read about it.
I tried casting for my '06 using pretty soft lead and didn't know a thing about doing it other than I had a single hole mold and the desire.

Never did get one to make a round hole in the paper, and mighty few of them of any shape that didn't include a bunch of various sized smaller hole's scattered around them too. After awhile I gave it up as a total waste of time.

Maybe 10-15 yrs ago when I got back into the shooting games I started casting for handguns and get along with that just great in buckets full quantities. In three sessions of about three to four hours I can cast up a two gallon bucket full of .38's easy enough. IF they age soften, I've never noticed it. When I get around to loading them, they've been hard enough everytime I haven't been able to mark them with my thumbnail. That's good enough for me as to hardness. My only goal is to have them hard enough they won't lead a bore in the handguns up to about 900fps or so, and this alloy will do that fine.

I try to keep the soft stuff separated when making a big melt of scrap for just in case later. Right now there's around 13-1400 ingots under my bench and maybe a dozen five gallon buckets full of scrap in the corner that hasn't been melted down yet. Yield has been between 110-125# per bucket. Doubt I'll need to pick up more scrap very soon.

I load and mostly let women and kids burn up the 115gr 308 RN's in the 06 to teach them how to shoot the big guns without recoil and blast working them over. They're quite accurate out to about 100 feet or so and that's about all the distance they need to learn how to shoot the big guns. I've taken over 400 rnds to the range and never fired a shot myself and run out of ammo. Had them lined up to shoot ten shots all night til they ran out. I get a lot of enjoyment out of helping people like that shoot, learn and have fun.
Those are loaded with about 5-7 gr Red Dot and never shown a sign of leading the bore either.

I wouldn't begin to guess what the BHN is of this alloy. Don't matter to me long as it's hard enough it don't lead the bore.