As well brass work hardens when it is reshaped and goes through the forming operations.

Per the Federal engineers they explained why theirs was on the soft side as they figured out a way to skip one of the normal draw operations in forming the brass.

When I was at Aberdeen PG we did a Rockwell Test on a S&W Revolver and a LC M118 MATCH case and the LC case was harder than the S&W revolver frame which surprised all of us. Both were on B scale.