heat softened lead

[crankycalico]

How much have you guys done with the detempered/heat softened bullet tips? Venturino mentions good luck with them in the lyman 4th, but id like to get some experience from you guys.

From difficulty to actual results.

[popper]

Use heat on the nose to soften WD hardened boolits. WDWW body and ACWW nose. Only works on ice water quenched boolits.

[Eutectic45]

Yes, you can water drop harden or oven harden boolets. Then sit them base down in water with the nose out of the water. Heat the nose to just under melting and let them cool slowly. the nose will then be the slow cooled hardness. This works with wheel weight alloy, I could get the body at BHN 28-30 and the nose would be about BHN 10-11. This worked best with long bullets, 170 - 200 grain 30 cal.

Wheel weight alloy is slightly brittle even at BHN 10, pure lead or lead with a little tin mushrooms better. I went to the two alloy,double pour method. You could use two pots, but I used one. A small Vienna sausage can in the pot had lead alloy, the bottom pour pot had Linotype. I used a small cartridge case with a wire handle to pour the boolet nose with lead then quickly put the mold under the spout and filled the base with lino. If you have a two cavity mold, just use one cavity, you have to be fast so the soft alloy is still hot enough for the two to fuse. You have to run the alloy very hot 750 worked well for me. The mold must be hot, I cast 5 fills of both cavities between each soft nose. I could even do short pistol boolets 250 grain 44s came out nice with a 380 auto case for the nose.

The meek shall inherit the earth, a 6 foot plot above them.

[crankycalico]

But what kind of actual performance do you get from them?

Do they really replace the heavy flat point bullet, or even a softer bullet with a shallow cup point?