Powder coating bullets

[Ranch Dog]

My goodness! Very pretty... how are they shooting Don?

[donhuff]

Not sure yet RD. I shot 60-70 last friday, but it was late and and getting dim so the few that I shot at a target were nothing to bragg about. I mostly was shooting at a steel plate out at 100 yd. Was hitting it as often as usual so, it's NOT making them go crazy inaccurate or accurate (not really suppose to). BUT it does take the smoke and mess out of the picture. And there was nothing at all in the barrel except a little soot.

I'll get around to shooting some of these new ones this week. I loaded up a bunch of 32-20 to shoot in my blackhawk. I'm pushing them pretty hard to see about the leading. The revolvers seem to lead more easily than the rifles do. A good thing about the powder coat is it enlarges the bullets that I shoot in the 32-20 enough that they now can be used in that revolver and they fit the cylinder throats better. But Then I can use the same bullet sized a little smaller in my 30 carbine blackhawk and they fit there too.

[62chevy]

Thems be some purrdy boolits you made up don.

[donhuff]

Thanks 62,RD,

Found out something today while putting all those tubes of lipstick in ammo boxes. I found one 44 that the primer was upside down in. So I pulled the bullet and saved the powder (Unique @9.0g.... ya know I gots to save the unique) and when I looked at the bullet it didn't look just right. I measured it with my mike and sure nuff, it had been swagged down by the brass. I usually don't have that problem! I checked the expander that I have been using for the last 30 years, and it was .428". That ought to be fine and like I said, it has been working all my life, so far. BUT....after thinking about it for a little, it came to me that curing the paint @400 degrees is killing the hardening that I get when casting, by dropping the hot bullets in water. The bullets are measuring at .429/.430 when pulled, and they are usually .431. So I'm gonna shoot these and see if they work like they use to or not. If they are down on accuracy, I'll have to figure out what to do about it. I may have to make a larger expander ball for my die............

Well there's the postman, I mean lady,honking the horn. I ordered some soft aluminum sheet and some copper sheet, both at .010" to try in my gas check maker. So I'm off to the reloading hut to see how they work. I'll report later.

[Ranch Dog]

Ahhh... such are these endeavours! Two steps forward and one backward! Keep us posted of this effect to the heat.

[donhuff]

Well, soft sux........
the soft aluminum is so soft that it just shears off at the bullet base when you try to "size" it onto a plain base bullet. And it doesn't cut very good in the check maker either. It's So soft it squishes, instead of shearing and forming. The soft copper does a little better, but not near as good as the aluminum flashing from the hardware store. If you have a reduced shank made for a gas check, it works good... like it's supposed to. I think that the soft stuff could be made to work OK by adjusting the sizes some, but the flashing works so much better and easier.

[Maximumbob54]

Temporary all stop to the HF black powder coat. There is a thread on Castboolits where a guy is swearing it ate up his Glock's Lone Wolf barrel after 500 shots. I'm calling BS as I've sized at least that many right now and my sizing die should be softer steel than a gun barrel (I think) and my die is still popping them out at .357" which is what they should be. But still, this is a new thing and a possible unknown. There is a bunch of back and forth over the materials used in powder coating and the HF black in particular. I know of no such talk from epoxy coated though.

[larryw]

Great info Bob, thank's. How about a "ball park" cost break down.
How much $ for the initial batch of materials, how much material
do you get, & how many bullets can you do with it??

[Maximumbob54]

The HF powder comes in 1# bottles for $5. The oven I think I paid $40ish maybe? The lacquer thinner I don't remember but it was at Home Depot for pretty cheap and the paint mixing bucket was a few bucks. It's not a scientific term but I think you could coat a gajillion bullets with the HF powder. I'm not using the black anymore as there is a maybe on it eating barrel steel but the gloss has no such reports. I don't find the red to coat as even. I read where a guy was "dry" tumbling the bullets in a small dish with a small amount of powder and that does sort of work with the HF gloss read. With any tumble coat they don't look good but they do get covered. I've still not bought the ES spray rig to actually apply powder coat the real way so I'm not sure but I know Harbor Frieght has the cheapest setup I've seen so far. Since you spray that you will end up with quite a bit of waste but I don't yet know how much. But at $5 a pound I think it will still be cheaper than regular lube in the long run. This isn't the epoxy paint thread but that stuff isn't near as cheap. The bullets get a far more even coverage but Klass Kote is $15 for A and the same for part B with shipping extra. I haven't kept track of how many bullets I've coated with the kit yet but it's been several hundred at least and I' not even at 3/4 yet so I have a long way to go. I've looked at the garage floor epoxy kits with a gallon total kit for around a hundred at Home Depot but I don't want that much goop setting around forever, I don't know how I would measure it out, and it's just easier to pay more for the smaller cans that are so much easier to work with. I guess if you could re-container the larger volume into a smaller can that would work but I've no clue about the shelf life of the A or the B. I'm sure it's a while though. I think the kits of Hi Tek are rated for at least 10.000 bullets but once again I've not tried it yet and it's not cheap either. If I do buy coated bullets from SNS or buy the kit I will of course take pics of the process, trial and error, and post away. That's as good as I can answer.

[Maximumbob54]

Learned a new trick today. It's with the HF red which is a gloss and not the matte finish of the black. It's funny as this is now known as the "dry" version and tumbling with lacquer thinner is the "wet" version. It's also funny as when you use the HF red it does a lousy job in the wet but seems to be the only one of the few HF colors that will work dry. You take a small tub, add maybe a half a teaspoon or less of the powder, add the bullets, and shake them up. The powder sticks to the lead in a pretty thin coat.



It doesn't look even but once it goes through the oven it seems to even out a bit.



This is after one coating. It's pretty thin but powder coat seems stupid strong so for all I know that's all it needs but I'm still going to see if a second coat works. So now it's time to try the second coating.

Second coating:


And after a second baking:


The back row is only once coated but the front row are the ones with the second coating now.

Maybe it's OCD or maybe I just wanted better. I decided to do a third coating and this time they look much better again and I will now set these aside for test loads.

Third coating:

Both the front and back are coated with three coats in this pic.