Annealing Boolit Noses

[runfiverun]

303 you might want to take a slightly different approach.
if it were my doings i'd oven treat the whole boolit then work on how much of the nose to either re-temper [ soften] or not depending upon deer or bird.
colored magic markers [for different depths of expansion] or even filling the nose with hot glue will differentiate and change the results.
i hope i haven't created a monster with more suggestions.

[Dannix]

303, have you read the Gates Extreme Meplat thread? If I recall correctly, there was a dude in there talking about using an HP to slow the bullet down for the best terminal performance. Your 'sacrificial' HP reminded me of it. You may want to look into it. IIRC the goal was proper terminal performance at different velocitys. Apparently too fast can negate a metaplate's effectiveness or something.

You current design with the desired goal of expansion + penetration (like a Partition), seems like the perfect design to water drop then nose soften. Those are nice and long though, yielding some proper sectional density -- you get some nice penetration as is, at least for flesh. Hitting bone may be a different story.

For what you got right now, I'd line up a bunch of bottles, layers of spaced sheet rock, etc., see how deep it penetrates. Then use a JRN load to compare. Soft + HP -- you may have a varmint buster, but something that splodes too fast for oinkers.

Just some ideas from what I recall reading here. Wissen, not kennen, if you will.

[NSP64]

After reading many threads about annealling boolit noses, I thought i would try it. I cast some 44 devastator boolits and used WDWW. I took some and placed them in a pan of water over their drive bands. I filled the hollow points with water on some, and left others empty. I used a propane torch and turned the pan getting all sides of the nose. I applied heat until they got a grey/dark tint to them. The ones with water, just started to boil off.

I then used a home made test unit to cause some repeatable expansion of the hollow points.

Meplate of nose area .330
Unannealed noses expanded to .350
Annealed with water in them .360
Annealed wiithout water.380

I will be trying out in late doe only season.

[x101airborne]

303guy, NOW THAT'S COOL!!

[fredj338]

Would you not get the same results standing the bullets on their bases in apan of water , then baking them in the oven for say 30min @ 400deg?

[Bass Ackward]

I suppose so, but boiling water is how I soften slugs. So if the water came to a boil in that 30 minute span, then you would lose hardness overall.

No idea how you would control that.

[NSP64]

Maybee put them in a pan with water up to the driving bands. Now freeze the water solid. Place Boolit-cicle in preheated 400* oven. That might work.

[NSP64]

I think that my test shows the heating with a torch softens the nose. I used a large center punch(1 pound) falling down a 3' tube to impact the hollow point. The three different types of boolits show the same amount of deformation. All WDWW show a .350 spread, all heat softened with water filled cavities show .360 spread and all heated empty noses showed .380 spread.

[Tony65x55]

I've been annealing the noses of cast lead boolits for over 25 years now and .357 Maximum's info is right on the money. I usually use 50/50 lead/ww to make the boolit from but on faster projectiles I use ww metal. I anneal after the boolits are sized and lubed. As the lube is under the cold water the torch has no effect. All my small caliber stuff gets this treatment if I'm going to hunt with it. You can get even more versatility casting two part boolits.

The young man in the pic used one of my Saeco #316 150 gr boolits loaded into a 7.62x39 (Mini-30) at 2200 fps to kill this decent buck with one shot. Bang, flop, DRT.