.44-77 PP bullets.

[Distant Thunder]

Kurt,

It's hard to tell just by looking at it. There are technical ways to tell, but that is above my pay grade.

You can check to see if it's magnetic.

Using a grinder you can check the spark compared to a known piece of steel. My dad could tell that way, I sometimes think I can tell that way.

In my shop I always tried to mark each piece when it is put on the shelf. Any piece on the shelf not marked got tossed in the scrap barrel. My steel suppliers all had a color coding system, none were the same, and they would paint one end of any pieces I bought. We would mark any small cut off pieces that were saved before putting them on a specific shelf. Once a piece of any size was unmarked it was pretty much worthless. Some of that tool steel was $18 + a pound back when I quit the business. You could scrap out a $700-$800 piece of steel in the blink of an eye! Not to even mention the cost of labor that may have been put into it when it was scrapped! That could be weeks of labor. It was entirely possible to scrap several thousand dollars worth of material and labor on any given day. The loss of money was bad enough but the loss of time was devastating. No pressure though! The hardest part of being in the tool and die business was learning to deal with the pressure! It took me a few years to learn how to deal with it. Before that it was slowly killing me. I can't say I miss those days all that much.

My steel needs are pretty flexible today and anything I make is pretty much for my own use and just has to work. Life is good!