powder coating cast bullets?

[SpeedyR]

so who here uses powder coat on their cast bullets?

anyone have a link to a good summary of how it's done and the process? I've been looking around castboolits and there's almost too much info there, and it's hard to find with some threads being hundreds of pages long. TL;DR

mainly considering 44mag, 300AACblackout, and possibly 6.8spc...

I've seen some folks that just tumble in dry powder, sift and dump on silicone cookie sheet, heat and size. Others do many steps, stand up each one individually, use powder guns, etc. etc.

what works for you?

 

[handloader]

I put them in my vibratory tumbler for 2 to 4 hours and walk away. They are perfectly coated. I then bake and size. fortunecookie45lc on YouTube is a great source of knowledge. See my aviator for effect.

 

[handloader]

Here are a few finished ones. Moderately taper crimp for best results.

 

[rosewood]

So far, I have done 9mm, 40 and 45-70 with great results. I do not powder coat any gas checked boolits, only plain base. After casting, I water drop mine in a cool whip bowl, then strain out water, pour boolits into a pan and let it dry in sun, or oven (very low temp) or air dry. Try not to touch the boolits with your hands or anything oily. Once dry, I put them in another cool whip bowl with the powdercoat and black air soft bb's and shake it really hard until I get an even coat, maybe 20-30 seconds. I then pick out the boolits with my fingers (using plastic gloves) and stand them up on a wire mesh I made from hardware cloth on my toaster oven baking tray. Place in oven for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees. I take them out and let cool. I then run them through the appropriate Lee sizer die and they are ready to load. The boolits shoot clean and no smoke other than the gunpowder. I had leading issues in my 45-70 Buffalo Classic with the plain base boolits. Powder coating solved that and I can plink the 500 yard steel plate with iron sites with the powder coated boolit fairly regularly.

One good thing about the powdercoat is it adds a few thousandths to the diameter, so if your boolit was casting smaller than you wanted, it takes care of that and you can then size where you want it. One bad thing, by adding a few thousandths, is it also reduces how far out you can seat your boolits, so you may have to adjust your load after you seat deeper to keep from being driven into the lands.

I have used blue and red powdercoat but settled on clear I bought from a Smoke???? on the cast boolit forum. Love the clear, just looks like a lead boolit. The clear is white before it is baked, so you can easily tell if you have coverage. The clear seems to cover better than the red I tried from HF.

Rosewood

 

[Glockadopoulos]

What Rosewood said. Smoke's clear sticks better than any other color when doing dry tumble. It's stupidly easy, I swirl mine 20 seconds tops. I like to wipe excessive powder from my bases, because I'm always chasing accuracy. Definitely get an oven thermometer for your toaster to verify that it's 400 degrees. A big convection toaster oven makes it really consistent and easy. Another simple tip, save some old ammo trays and use those to drop your bullets in nose down, after dry tumbling. Fill up several trays and you can pack a lot of bullets into your baking pan (I like parchment paper for my pan). Another handy tip, line your oven in firebricks to keep the temperature up, and preheat the oven while you shake your first batch. If you shake a batch while another batch is baking, you should be able to coat several hundred bullets per session.

I water drop mine right out of the oven, mostly for a nice even finish and smooth base. Once dry I run through a Lee push-through sizer. Check your Lee sizer, they're often a little out of round or undersized. This is easily remedied with a small dowel and 800 grit sandpaper, rolling thr die across your knee for a few minutes.

I personally think dumping bullets on their side is malarkey. PC liquifies and has to run down to one side. I suspect these folks don't have the marksmanship skills to realize they're producing wobbly bullets.

They're capable of excellent accuracy. This is 25 yards; I'd bet money that I threw two of the 10 shots and the other 8 shots are what the bullet is capable of.

Don't hesitate to ask any specific questions. I encourage you to get a cheap toaster, oven thermometer, Black air soft bb's, #5 plastic container, some of Smokes powder, and just go for it.

 

[SpeedyR]

sounds good. i was mainly looking at 44mag, and then possibly some rifle calibers. But I do have some 45ACP LRN bullets I could do (I don't have a mold but have bought them in the past). I shoot a lot of lead in 38 special and the 44 mag (lighter loads I use lead, heavy loads I use XTP's and H110) so maybe they are some options in the future.

I have an older/used RCBS and Lyman 450 sizers that I got used, can I still use those for sizing even if I don't have to use the lube feature any more? or is the Lee just that much easier to use? I already have a few sizers, and can put gas checks on some of them as well...

does anyone actually gas check PC bullets?

 

[Glockadopoulos]

It's been a while since I messed with my dad's lubesizer. IIRC the lubesizer is at least 50% slower. The Lee push-through is under 30 bucks I believe, and likely worth it if you get serious about PC'ing. You can size a bullet as quickly as you can set it in place and pull the lever, and you have all the leverage of your single stage press. Sizing 600 or.more an hour is very doable.

That being said, there is no reason you couldn't use the lubesizers when you're first playing around with PC'ing. Just like a thrift store small toaster oven, you'll want to upgrade if you like powdercoating.


Don't have much experience with gas checks personally. I have PC'd some 500 s&w slugs with clip on gas checks for my dad, but we haven't loaded and shot them yet. I don't know if gas checks come with any sort of oil contamination from the manufacturing process, but I hosed these with brake cleaner before clipping them on. Oil is your enemy when powder coating; blue nitrile gloves are your friend. FWIW the gas checks are held on nice and tight by the powder, and running through a push-through sizer was no problem. The sizer die was a little undersized however; I still need to get around to opening it up a little with sandpaper so I can get the rest of his boolits sized properly.

 

[rosewood]

I haven't seen the need for PC'ing gas checked boolits. I am thinking it would be aggravating installing them since typically you install them with the sizer die, but I have never tried it. I started PC'ing to solve leading issues and that hasn't been a problem with gas checked boolits. I suppose if you were pushing rifle calibers near jacketed velocities, PC'ing might be useful on a gas checked boolit.

Rosewood

 

[SpeedyR]

just ordered a couple of lbs of Smokes powder and bb's. guess it's time for the wife to get a new toaster oven for christmas, right??

our old one is a convection unit, so that's a plus.

I ordered a pound of red and black and then a sample pack of orange, blue and purple. I'm guessing I'll have lots of red and black if anyone wants to try some.

my plan is to run this on 44mag, but I have a 6.8spc and 300 BO mold, so will try it on them eventually as I get around to casting for those. I hadn't really planned on casting for the 6.8 but it sounds like the PC might make any issues moot.

 

[rosewood]

That is what I did, upgrade the toaster oven and retired the old one to my shop.