Suggestions for lead hardness tester?

[osteodoc08]

I would like to get my father a lead hardness tester as a surprise gift to him for helping me out at my place cleaning up after all the storms we had in the south last week. He casts his own bullets but doesn't have a lead hardness tester. I'd like to get him one. What would everyone else suggest? I have a budget of up to $150 or so.

 

[rcmodel]

Well, I only know of three.

Lee makes one.
http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=731364

And LBT makes one.
http://lbtmoulds.com/hardtester.shtml

And SAECO makes one.
http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=193445

I think you probably get what you pay for as the price increases.

Myself?
I use the old nail test.
If I can scratch it with my thumbnail, it is Soft.
If I can't, it is Hard.
If I can barely leave a mark, it is Wheelweights.

Thats all I need to know.

rc

 

[GP100man]

For the money & some patience the lee is hard to beat .

The whole trick is to learn to focus the "microscope" & to hold it steady !!

The absolute cadillac in testers is the Cabin Tree tester , but may be out of budget !

http://www.castingstuff.com/

This is how I hold my lee "scope" .



There`s also good threads over on the CastBoolits.Gunloads site discussing testers !

 

[evan price]

Believe it or not, my BHN tester kit cost me less than ten bucks.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=75455

You can use standard graphite artists' pencils to test hardness of lead to within acceptable limits. Yes, it works!

 

[fguffey]

I do not covet tools, I use them, and I make gages, a hardness tester is not a difficult tool to make but I believe it is beyond my ability to convince the reloaders it can be done, something like Jimmy Dean explaining the reason the chicken crossed the road, he said the chicken crossed the road to convince (show) the opossum it could be done.

If I want to know the hardness of my lead ingots, I drop them, lead when dropped has a dead sound, hard lead when dropped makes a ringing sound, for those that have R. Lee's book about modern reloading should read the lead hardness testing section. Mr Lee claims, with practice, a hammer can be used. The difficulty of getting it correct with a hammer is the reason reloaders can not built a lead hardness tester.

F. Guffey

 

[denton]

Making your own hardness test is dead easy. You need a small steel sphere like a ball bearing, some pure lead, a clamp or vise, a digital caliper and possibly a loupe.

Put the steel ball between the unknown sample and the pure lead specimen. Squeeze this sandwich in a clamp or vise. Apply enough force to get an easily measured indentation in both specimens, but not enough to sink the ball beyond half way.

Take the sandwich apart. Measure the diameter of the dent in the lead. Measure the diameter of the dent in the unknown sample.

Divide the lead dent diameter by the unknown dent diameter. Square this number. Multiply by 5. The result is the BH of the unknown specimen.

 

[tlen]

I've had the opportunity to use both the Lee and Saeco hardness testers.
The Saeco tester is much much easier to use and is repeatable. The Lee tester is cheaper but is much harder to read with the scope set up. That said, I preferred the Saeco tester.