soften nose of heat treated

[bmortell]

I have some unloaded boolits that are heat treated 50-50 and powder coated and they seem to have age hardened quite a bit and no longer expand in my application, ive heard of standing the bottom half in water and torch heating the nose but I think that would burn the PC is there something else I can do?

[edp2k]

Hollow point them.

[popper]

Reheat and AC.

[bmortell]

if I stand them in a tray and re heat them, take em out and pour water in the tray half way up the bullets. would that do anything to make the base harder than the nose?

[Dusty Bannister]

It sounds like you are trying to anneal bullets that you have already heat treated for hardness. You now find that the bullets are too hard after age hardening for some time. Assuming that these are hunting bullets, is it necessary to have the body hard and the nose soft? Perhaps a new batch correctly sized and powder coated without a quench will be of sufficient hardness to serve the need for a hunting bullet.

[popper]

I tried re-heating, then standing in cold water, didn't work (30cal rifle). Mine are flat nose, thought about using a 220F plate on the nose for a short time but haven't tried it yet. Some OP got it to work but controlling the process is a bugger. Torching the nose will burn the PC. Probably nothing will work for short pistol bullets. The two part (poured) is most successful, pure nose and hi Sb body with no heat treating? Just have to wait a while after PC cooking for the body to harden. Or use soft and GC. I got 1% Sb/GC to work good to ~1700 in BO carbine.

[GBertolet]

Normal procedure to anneal HT bullets, is to put the bullets in water covering the driving bands, put a drop of water on the bullet meplat, heat with a propane torch, until the water evaporates, then you are done. This procedure has been mentioned already for bare bullets. My question is with a PC bullet, since the driving bands are in the water, and are unaffected by the heat, so what if the nose has the PC burned. It doesn't contact the bore anyway. What would be the issue?