Opie ordinarily I stick them in the top of the RR hole (already made) and use my well water (ph in the sixes) and they just pop and grow. With the bad seeds my scenario went like this:

plant ASH and Church seed in RR's....add water.

4 days later ASH is up, tap root through bottom.....ready to plant. Plant ASH. Wait longer for church seed.....zero.
After a week I crack rr open....seed bounces around on the floor because it's hard as a rock.

Put seed BACK in rr.....plant SECOND SEED (snl x nh)

3 days later.....SNL x NH has cracked and begun to show. Nothing from seed one. Still closed. Plant SNL x NH.

Wait several more days....dump seed and start number 2.

Pretty much same scenario for seed number 2 (and i DO MEAN number 2....:wtf except now alongside it is a CC seed......5 days.....blah blah plant CC seed. Check church seed... WET...but won't crack. Wait several more days....nothing.

Try to "gently" crack seed and end up MASHING it ......put it back for a few days but it's basically stepped on.

SEED NUMBER 3........take nail file and gently scrape the outside of the seed.....I liked Opie's "taking the shine off" example....that's about right. My understanding is you want to "thin" the shell so the water gets in and the seed pops. It didn't take much scraping on my part and then I could actually see a bit of "white" showing through and I stopped there. Place seed in RR and wait.

3-4 days....check seed carefully...all wet and swollen but shell hasn't quite cracked (but is so soft it's flexible). Put seed back.

More days pass.....take seed out....exactly the same.......pop one shell off (very easy...came right off without a prob) Put seed back.

Pray alot and do a rain dance around it.....counterclockwise (image reaper does this dance naked .....I dont :wtf

Wait three more days....crack RR....very small taproot starting....the only change in three days.

Wait three more days. Exactly the same.

Burn it.

MVP on reflection I think you're better off just takin your sandpaper and rubbing the seed gently and that should work for you.