ORIGINAL: cayugad
When you get all your lead smelted down and into ingot form, take a nail and scratch a bar. It should make a considerable mark into the lead if it is real soft. If you have any doubts, cast it as range ammo and then make sure you use a know bullet for hunting. Although we shot a lot of range lead in our days. We even hunted with it and killed deer until someone told us it was too hard to use hunting.
I've never shot anything with a rounball. Do they expand when shot at the 70-85 gr loads? I would think a harder ball might be beneficial. 1/2 inch hole in and out, let's in a lot of air and a lot of blood out. When you used the hard ball Dave, how did they perform on game?