What technique for one coat Powder Coating?

[dahermit]

I have decided, despite the fact that it adds time to the bullet making process, to explore powder coating.

I do not use hollow point bullets, so I am not about to hang them on nails and spray with a gun. But, the guy(s) who tumbles coats the bullets and spreads them out willy-nilly on expanded metal ends up with little spots where the powder coat gets stuck to the metal.

Also, I noticed from the posts that some of the people who tumble the powder on, have ended up doing two or more coats to get complete coverage. I do not want to have to put more than one coat on.

There is a local Harbor Freight, so I will pick-up some of their Red powder.

So my question is: Have you found a method of tumbling flat-base bullets that imparts enough powder onto the bullets that covers enough in one coat to do the job. Or, should I just give-up and use a Harbor Freight Gun?

[Vance]

When I was still messing with powder coating, I found that tumbling bullets with the black airsoft pellets made it easy to get one coat good coverage. I used needle nose pliers that the tips had been powdered with the powder coat powder to pick the bullets out of the container and stand them on a tray covered with non stick foil and then baked.

I found personally that powder coating only had the benefit of not gunking up your seating die. There was no improvement in accuracy and I wasn't having a leading issue before. I would rather spend a few minutes cleaning my seating die than wast any more time on powder coating.

[dahermit]

I suspect that powder coating has more to do with making "pretty" bullets than than any other factor. I know that I can crank out more bullets sticking with lubing with my Lyman sizer and NRA Alox 50/50, but I am retired and Winter is coming on with little for me to do. So's I likely going to try it.

Also, as dirty (builds up a sludge in my revolvers), as Alox and cast is, I want to try powder coating for my M1 Carbine so as not to mess up the gas port/system. So with the M1 Carbine, it may be a better (cleaner) way to go, albeit S....l....o...w...e...r... But, I am still looking for suggestions.

[Unclenick]

I bought some of the HF powder, but haven't got around to messing with it yet. I am looking at coating H&G 68 style .45 Auto bullets, and figured I would make up an alcohol slurry and just dip them from the shoulder down and not try to coat the ogive or nose at all. Just dip and turn upside down and set into a hole in an aluminum plate (the only problematic part; may need a needle nose pliers with rubber tubing over the jaws) to dry. Then put the whole plate in the oven later.

[snuffy]

Uncle nick, alcohol will not dissolve the HF powder coat. IE, make it into a solution. It will suspend the powder as long as you keep it shook up enough, but as soon as you tried to coat the boolits, it would drain off leaving them bare. Acetone seems to be the best, lacquer thinner has worked as well.

Here's the place on the cast boolits forum where a variation of the "piglet" method was discussed. Acetone was used for the solvent, it worked okay, but nowhere near as good as tumbling with plastic BB's in a #5 plastic bowl.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-Piglet-Method


20 pages to figure it out, but most are now either tumbling or electrostatic spraying,(ES).

My first try at powder coating was the tumble coat from Harbor Freight in a #5 plastic bowl and white airsoft BB's. It worked okay, I got to shoot some right away.







Those were dead soft, almost pure lead that did NOT lead my 9mm 75B CZ.

I gradually went to the ES gun, I didn't want to spend the $$ for a compressor,, but I needed one for the loading room anyway, so it's serves a purpose.

[Poodleshooter]

Have you found a method of tumbling flat-base bullets that imparts enough powder onto the bullets that covers enough in one coat to do the job.

I just use the dry tumbling method using a poly container. I don't even use the airsoft BBs. I bake them in a convection oven for the required time. I don't even bother to do anything more than pour them on steel mesh, and then separate them slightly so they don't stick to one another. They still stick to the steel mesh, but pop off easily when the mesh is flexed, leaving only small uncovered areas on the bullet.
I have yet to see any leading whatsoever. Accuracy is fine for my uses, though I haven't tested anything past 50yds since I mostly do this for pistols, pistol caliber carbines and subsonic .300 Blackout.

[pete2]

I looked into this but it seems like more trouble than it's worth unless you can't use lubed bullets for some reason.

[snuffy]

I looked into this but it seems like more trouble than it's worth unless you can't use lubed bullets for some reason.

That was my first response when I first heard about it. I fell for the molly-coat method for jacketed bullets, all I got is a black mess on everything and a permanently fouled bore.

I didn't want the expense of a compressor, oven, and spray gun. no room to do it either. Tumble lube or IOW the shake and bake method seemed easy enough and all it cost was a pound of HF powder.

Advantages are many.
*Almost no smoke.,(Only smoke is from the powder).
*No lube to melt off the boolits when stored in boxes.
*Again, the lube can't melt off the lube grove when it's loaded in a cartridge case.
*No lube build up inside a seating die.
*Boolits aren't greasy when handling them while loading.(In fact they're so slippery you will end up dropping some.)
*Undersized molds that were either returned or set aside as unusable can now be used because the powder coat is a fairly thick layer that adds diameter to the undersized boolit.
*Boolits can be fired without sizing if they're the right size, or sized down to the right size. The Lee push through sizers work great, the Lyman sizers also work. Of course so does a star.
*One dry brush, one brush wet with solvent, wipe with clean patch, all done cleaning!
*And last but not least, no leading*

Disadvantages? Don't store your semi-auto hand gun rounds in plastic boxes with the boolit up. It's darn near impossible to get the darn shells out of the boxes. My dry old fingers can't get a grip on those slippery boolit surfaces.

*Those boolits I pictured up above, I mentioned they were cast of pure lead? They were fired in my CZ 75B, that leaded with every lead boolit I ever tried in it, with those powder coated boolits, NO LEADING. No accuracy either! 9mm is too high a pressure for soft boolits. They were badly deformed by that pressure. The TC boolits missed an entire standard target @ 25 yards. The RN was slightly better;





The 2 45's, one is a 200 RNFPHP, a MP mold, the other 45 is a L 45 TLTC 230. Notice how the coating stays on the boolit? It's like a bonded copper jacket.

[dahermit]

I looked into this but it seems like more trouble than it's worth unless you can't use lubed bullets for some reason.

I have used Bee's wax/Alox to lube my bullets since the sixties. The only complaint I have with that method is it is so dirty...smoky and there is a sludge that builds-up inside the frame of my revolver that I an not so much concerned about in my handguns, but...I am wary of using such bullets in my M1 Carbine inasmuch as it has that gas-hole and floating chamber to operate. I envision that getting all gunked-up and possibly causing a stoppage with extended shooting.

Besides, I have nothing to do this Winter and have decided to experiment with "pretty, colored" (I suspect that is the reason most mess with it...they like pretty bullets), bullets.

Like you say, I do not intend on replacing all my cast bullet endeavors with Alox 50/50 with powder coating...I just want to experiment.

[hanleyfan]

I went to powder coating 2 years ago and will never go back to the grease lubes, I always hated that part of reloading because of the mess and grease, now I enjoy it since I started powder coating, I find it relaxing and enjoying but some don't so do what ever you like and above all else enjoy yourself thats what it is all about anyway.

[Unclenick]

Uncle nick, alcohol will not dissolve the HF powder coat. IE, make it into a solution. It will suspend the powder as long as you keep it shook up enough, but as soon as you tried to coat the boolits, it would drain off leaving them bare.

I should certainly hope it wouldn't actually dissolve the powder. I was thinking thin slurry. I've done that with powdered waxes that block oxygen from parts being heat treated. I would figure you'd need something like methylene chloride to actually dissolve the powder. Might work OK, but breathing the fumes is not something I'd look forward to. Perhaps a compromise, like liquid paint stripper would dissolve it, if that's even desirable. The stripper usually has acetone and methylene chloride, both, in addition to other things.

I fell for the molly-coat method for jacketed bullets, all I got is a black mess on everything and a permanently fouled bore.

Yikes! I've had nothing but good results from that process. My old Garand used to foul so badly it's 600 yard groups would be falling apart at about round #40. It would then take four hours of repeated applications of Sweet's 7.62 to get all the copper out. With moly, though, it would go through an 80 round match just fine and it cleaned up in half an hour instead of four hours. Sounds like something went wrong when you did it. Not that I would expect to change your mind about the process after that experience, but it has me curious what the issue was. Did you use the original NECO process and supplies? There was a lot of bad "me too" stuff out there that didn't follow Roger Johnston's (NECO) patent process or material types.

[snuffy]

I thought what the hey, I've got some powder coat, some alcohol, and some bare boolits, why not try uncle Nicks theory?? First try was with harbor freight red. Total failure! The alcohol fused the powder into a solid lump, could not be diffused or broken up. Oh well, I hadn't used it since I started spraying with the US gun. HF powder is epoxy based.

Next came some orange powder I got from Powder-By-The-Pound. That stuff works well with the US gun, or by tumbling application. PBTP is a polyester based coating. Oh by the way, the alcohol used is denatured alcohol you can get at any paint/hardware store. The PBTP orange went into a slurry easily. I just went with maybe ¼ cup of alky, then started dribbling the powder in as I kept mixing the slurry. I ended up with a slurry that was the consistency of pancake syrup.

Now I simply tossed the boolits into the plastic cup, ( a 2 cup rubber-made screw top container), swirled them around, then picked them out with a tweezers. Setting them on a sheet of non-stick aluminum foil that is on top of a woven square steel cooling rack for oven bake stuff like cookies. It's a tight fit in my toaster oven, which was pre-heated to 400 degrees.

The boolits were dry to the touch before baking, and the coating was pretty hard even before curing. Now for the failure part. The coating was very uneven. Lumpy, bumpy, globs, and bare spots on the tops and sides. I will say that IF I could have done the coating in such a way that the film of the slurry was evenly applied, this would work. The results are some really weird hard lumps and globs, a very uneven coating.

I haven't smash tested the boolits to see if the coating has adhered to the lead, but I don't see why it wouldn't be.

Oh the boolits used were a Lee .358-158 TC. boolit. It's a good boolit for speed loaders, the truncated cone point slides in a cylinder quite easily from a speed loader.

If somebodies interested I can take a few pics, put them on this thread. Those boolits will not be sized or loaded, I'm just going to include them into the pot for the next casting session.

[454PB]

45 year caster here. I wanted to try the powder coat, I can't yet tell you how they perform, because I haven't fired any yet. I can tell you how I did the coating in a very simple way.

I put 100 Lee .45 230 gr. TC boolits in a Ziploc freezer bag (has to be the freezer bag to hold up), and about a teaspoon of Harbor Freight Red in the bag. I did two of these (200 boolits total), placed them in my vibratory case tumbler, and let it run for about 10 minutes. To begin with, I was using hemostats to transfer the coated boolits to the toaster oven tray. After considerable fumbling, I put on a latex glove and used my fingers to move them.

I set the oven at 350 degrees, placed the tray in it, and within about 5 minutes I saw the coating "sheening". After 15 additional minutes, I removed the tray and let it cool. My micrometer said .457", so I ran them through my Star .452" sizer without any lube. Though it required some additional effort, the sizing went well. Of the 200 boolits, not one was a reject.

[dahermit]

45 year caster here. I wanted to try the powder coat, I can't yet tell you how they perform, because I haven't fired any yet. I can tell you how I did the coating in a very simple way.

I put 100 Lee .45 230 gr. TC boolits in a Ziploc freezer bag (has to be the freezer bag to hold up), and about a teaspoon of Harbor Freight Red in the bag. I did two of these (200 boolits total), placed them in my vibratory case tumbler, and let it run for about 10 minutes. To begin with, I was using hemostats to transfer the coated boolits to the toaster oven tray. After considerable fumbling, I put on a latex glove and used my fingers to move them.

I set the oven at 350 degrees, placed the tray in it, and within about 5 minutes I saw the coating "sheening". After 15 additional minutes, I removed the tray and let it cool. My micrometer said .457", so I ran them through my Star .452" sizer without any lube. Though it required some additional effort, the sizing went well. Of the 200 boolits, not one was a reject.

Pictures? Was the tumbler completely empty (no walnut shells or corn cob to cushion)? Did you put any Air Soft pellets into the bag with the bullets?

[454PB]

I'll try to post some pictures later. The tumbler was empty, and nothing other than the boolits and powder coat in the bags. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the powder clung to the boolits......nice even coating. I had to tap them a bit before placing them on the tray to remove the excess powder.

I expected the bags to move around the bowl as it vibrated, but they actually wanted to roll over, so I manually adjusted them a few times. I probably could have saved the quart bags for reuse, but didn't risk it considering what a mess it would make if one of them failed. Besides, they are cheap.

[454PB]

Here are pics.....before sizing and after.



[IMG][/IMG]

[res45]

454PB,thats a fine coating job there,those bullets look really nice. I'll have to give that method a try next week as I have a couple hundred Lee 230 gr. RN bullet to coat.

[rrruger]

In a nut shell, I spend just 20min to powder coat about 30 158 grain lead bullets at a time. I use no lube no gas check and have loaded hundreds at pretty hot .357 levels. I have had zero leading issues to date. I don't own a chronograph but based on the chart speeds for 2400 and H110 I am hitting 1450 feet per inch out of my GP100. I'm sure it is more through the carbine. At 25 yards my 60 year old eyes and nerves easily shoot poker chip size groups using a scope. Again, none of the mess of lubes and gas checks.

My process is very simple. A plastic 'Ziplock' brand two cup bowl with a screw on lid will do about 30 bullets at a time. I add black plastic 'Air soft' BB's and a small amount of PC powder. I shake for a couple of minutes and then fish the pullets out and place them bottom down on a cookie sheet coated with non stick tin foil. ten or fifteen minutes at 250 degrees in the toaster oven is all it takes. You can bake one batch while you prepare another.

When you are through, just screw the lid back on and set your tumbler aside until next time. Everything is dry so cleanup is a snap. The very best part is a 4 cent bullet vs. a 20 cent bullet! That's Hummm? five for the price of one.

[chris in va]

I would also like to add to this thread.

One major reason for powdercoating is being able to use lead bullets in a polygonal barrel. Since I started, my Kahr has seen more rounds downrange in two weeks than it has the past five years. No lead buildup, no danger of overpressure.

I also get to use them in my CX4 without the usual buildup in the first 2". Accuracy would fall off after three mags but not anymore. I'm also going to experiment with x39 mid loads around 1600fps without a gas check and even a reduced load in my Garand.