Powder Coating Boolits

[bstone5]

Used an old pair of needle nose pliers.

Tig welded small pins that touched when the pliers were closed.

The pins hit the tip and base of the bullet.

The system worked but the coating was not even and often too thick.

I never tried the process with regular powder coat material.

I was using the coating for covering fishing lures at the time.

i got the fishing lure coating at a local sporting goods store.

The bullets were between the pins while heating the bullet with a heat gun and
while dipping in the fluid bed.

[Russel Nash]

build your own powder coat oven?

http://www.powdercoatoven.4t.com/

[Grump]

Pardon me if this was tried in the pages between #3 and #42, but...

What about a rack to just hold the bullets nose-down? Think like a loading block. Square mesh mounted in a frame would allow transport from coating to baking. Or sheet metal with holes might be foldable to create its own legs. Round holes could be sized to bear on SWC bullet shoulders, keeping that bullet type perfectly vertical.

Conceivably this could be coupled with a bullet feeder design so you just move the holes underneath the output part and let the bullets fall into the holes.

Bases would be fully coated, with lead exposure to propellant gases just not happening.

I'm sure that the weight irregularities of coating going further up the ogive on one side but not as far on the other would have zero effect on accuracy down to about 3/4 MOA.

More stable than setting them on their bases.

[xyankeeworkshop]

Grump,

I have pics of a couple of my jigs for holding boolits inverted at post 509. Of the two, I'm currently sticking with the one for band-coating only. The reasons for this are A) it works insofar as the "important" parts of the boolit are PC'd, B) It's easy to move from bench to spray booth to oven without having boolits fall over, and C) I found it much harder to get consistant PC coverage.

[joemoe]

This fluid bed thing seems like a good idea for mass PC'ing boolits. So far my paper clip jig and CJ's hollow point jig seems to work for me, but it would be nice to just drop a bunch of boolits in a bowl and just tumble them in powder. Then I saw the video below and wonder if you can heat the boolits in an oven then drop them into a mesh cup suspended from the fluid bed. The powder then should only coat the hot boolits and hopefully not the mesh as we jiggle the boolits around. All this equipment is just beyond my budget to try out right now. So far all my PC boolits shoots great ... less smoke and cleaning .. Yay. Thx, CJ for the jig idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po_YceWOLiE

[Russel Nash]

Cool video! Thanks for posting that.

The other night when I was image google searching stuff, I did see another pic I should have right clicked saved or posted in this thread. You all have seen those big chest type freezers that are about six feet long the grocery stores put out in the middle of the big aisles? It looked like that, but with a squirrel cage blower attached at the bottom on one end of it.

[popper]

Shot ~200 PCd 40s yesterday from the XD & PX4, which has always leaded badly. Offhand & 1-handed practice @ 15 yds I managed to keep most in the rings. RO asked what kind of bullets I was shooting, he'd never seen white ones before. Cleaned both this morning, NO lead, just black residue. Even the slide & magwel didn't have much residue. If I were needing to do a really large quantity I get the HiTex from Donnie & find a used kitchen oven, wire it for 110 volts & put it on casters.

[bstone5]

The link below is where I found the data on making the fluid bed from PVC pipe coupling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRL-HuoSSRo

[Russel Nash]

Yeah, I have thought about Donnie's HI-TEK solution/process. I guess I'm with jmorris on that, in that the bad part, IIRC, was coating and baking 3 times.

But I think any large fluidized bed process attempts to do boolits in bulk are going to require a mesh tray or basket of some sort which will result in scars that will have to be tumbled off and probably recoated again.

Sooooo....whatever time you might save by NOT re-racking boolits one at a time by hand into some jig, you lose by having to tumble and recoat by trying to fluidized bed boolits in bulk.

That's my theory anyway....

[popper]

coating and baking 3 times. - IIRC only 2 times for ~ 10 min. He says ~ $0.01- .02/boolit, which turns me off.

[OldMontanaFart]

TYVM for this link! I've followed this entire thread with great interest!

build your own powder coat oven?

http://www.powdercoatoven.4t.com/

[Bad Water Bill]

OldMontanaFart

Welcome to our happy HOME. Pull up your most comfortable chair grab a MUG of coffee relax and enjoy.

[Russel Nash]

You're welcome Old Montana Fart!

EDIT: if you are really in Montana, the pickin's might be slim, but here in the St. Louis metro area via Craig's List searches there appear to be a lot of conveyor belt commercial pizza ovens for sale. I did't even bother looking for toaster ovens yet.

I don't know if you have been following along with this entire thread, but everything I have done up to this point has been theory. I haven't actually powder coated anything yet. So take anything I say with a grain of salt.

My buddy over in St. Louis has his own powder coating business, so my first steel frame/wire jig is sized to fit his oven. His oven is 6 feet tall by 44 inches deep by 40 inches wide. He already offered to do some of my steel targets for free, so I figured it would be best to have all my ducks lined up first before I go over there.

[bmiller]

Russel, have you tried the adhesive method that was mentioned earlier? I want to give it a try, but have not had time.

[unfy]

build your own powder coat oven?

http://www.powdercoatoven.4t.com/

Yup, there are plenty of forum threads (I don't have any 'on me' at the moment) that discuss it too.

Most are for professional PC shops. Huge walk in ovens, fancy electronics, etc.

The short end synopsis:

* Metal wall studs (ie: drywall) for the joints ($2-$4 a piece)
* Some thin sheet metal for the walls (cost varies)
* Rock wool insulation between walls and exterior ($50 gets a fair amount)
* Hinges
* Preferably some kind of oven door / heat tolerant "seal"
* A 220v or 110v oven bake element ($20-$40) ... or multiple heating elements depending on size
* Temperature control of some sort (range controls can be had for $15, or complex digital things with thermostats...)
* Possibly some temp resistant plastic / glass for a view window
* if going cheap route - a cheap oven thermometer (sits inside oven, dial based usually)

Build:

* Build frame with drywall studs
* Rivet sheet metal interior in place
* Make sure there's a 1-2" vent hole near the top
* Holes and mounting for heating elements
* Run wires
* Rivet outside sheet metal
* Mount door
* Deal with preview window possibly
* however you wanna deal with racks / hangers

It's possible for a smaller build (maybe even 2'x2'x2' ???) that you can skip the insulation (ie: look at toaster ovens, they aint insulated).

As far as heating elements and electronics, doing it with oven elements is suggested due to their large size.

For my 2'x2'x2' build, I'll be attempting just a cheap $15 110v '5th burner' thing (hot plate ?).

---

Looking around hardware store, I didn't see anything I liked for insulation on plywood build. There was some foil sided stuff, but it was all real thin foil. There was the shiny bubble wrap, too... didn't care for how that looked either.

edit:

Expanded polystyrene (white styrofoam insulating board):

464°F (240°C) - Polystyrene, Melting point

The pink boards: Boiling Point: Decomposes over 600ºF (316ºC) Freezing Point: Softens @ 220ºF (104ºC)

Cement board: don't burn.

OSB (glued together wood flakes): Flammability Characteristics: OSB products may ignite if exposed to
temperatures exceeding 400°F. These products are combustible and may burn if exposed to open flames, high temperature objects or oxidizing chemicals

Galvanized steel siding is relatively cheap (3' x 8' for $15 or so) but has the ridges in it... dunno if the ridges are a concern ?

[unfy]

I think I'm gonna end up getting some of the pink stuff (we might have some of it here at work, I'll check in a sec) ... throw it on a small pan and throw it in the toaster oven and see what happens to it. I'll try it elevated off the pan by some pins as well as directly on the pan.

I'm thinking some ultra cheap 1x4 boards (typically 4 foot sections for a dollar) to build a frame, then maybe some kind of insulation, then cement board / gypsum board / other-similarly-cheap-not-wood-boards or something for the interior.

While I'm at it, might as well throw some boards in the toaster oven as well to see what they do :P

Trying to read MSDS and other stuff to get useful information about this subject is downright infuriating.

---

Found some spare Foamular sheet stuff ehre at work (a small 4x4 inch square). Testing will begin tomorrow

[Edubya]

You guys may be adding too much complications to this. Propane Gas Infrared Ceramic Heater 100000 Btu (http://www.bing.com/shopping/propane...M=EGCA&lppc=16 ) can put out enough heat turn a small room into an oven. They have those that are electric that can put out 40,000 Btu and that would take care of a 4'X4' sheet metal oven. Dead air space over an inner oven box would insulate pretty well. Fire brick and a second layer of sheet metal would make a kiln that would hold the heat for hours. Maybe you should look for a used kiln. People take up ceramic the get tired or just want a new kiln. A kiln will heat up to 1200* and they are economical, due to the fire brick and insulation.

EW

PS: Maybe you could convert an old leaking water heater to an oven. Cost would be less than a toaster oven.

[Ken73]

For those of you looking for a bigger oven - have you considered looking on Craigslist for a cheap used oven/stove unit? I had a buddy that was replacing his at his (then) new house and I asked if I could have the old one (they were going to have it hauled off!) so I got mine for free. If anything, you can disassemble it and use the internals (insulation, sheet metal, elements) to build an acceptable oven. Also consider the use of a PID controller (similar to what folks are using to control the temperature of their casting pots on here) to keep the temperature at a nice constant level.

[unfy]

You guys may be adding too much complications to this. Propane Gas Infrared Ceramic Heater 100000 Btu (http://www.bing.com/shopping/propane...M=EGCA&lppc=16 ) can put out enough heat turn a small room into an oven. They have those that are electric that can put out 40,000 Btu and that would take care of a 4'X4' sheet metal oven. Dead air space over an inner oven box would insulate pretty well. Fire brick and a second layer of sheet metal would make a kiln that would hold the heat for hours. Maybe you should look for a used kiln. People take up ceramic the get tired or just want a new kiln. A kiln will heat up to 1200* and they are economical, due to the fire brick and insulation.

EW

PS: Maybe you could convert an old leaking water heater to an oven. Cost would be less than a toaster oven.

Firebrick. $14 for 6 bricks or so ? 9" x 4" ? You'd need how many hundreds of dollars to make it work ?

Building an oven is easy. Building an oven that can handle 400-450F as cheap as you can ... is a different story.

I've been avoiding the "old" oven stuff... it's an 'unknown quantity' for relating plans and such. Not to mention they tend to be unyieldy. Granted, an old oven plus a some heavy duty aircraft snips or a cutting torch can prolly go a long way to getting a smaller scaled box. I'm speaking out of my *** for this line: when was asbestos insulation stopped use in ovens ? How old is 'too old' ? heh.

With that said, I did pick up Dan's Workshop Electric Radiant Shop Furnace book / pdf for $4, and it can be built for about $180-$220 depending on how you go with the electronics. Only mention it cause it's an awesome book and the plans are nice and the build seems like something anyone could do (and it uses fire bricks heh).

In regard to Ken73's mention of a PID controller - they are indeed better at keeping a stable target temperature ... and tend to run more expensive.

I really wanna get this oven build to $50-$75 ... 24x24x24 is the smallest size I'd accept, with 24x24x36 being preferred.

An old water heater is indeed interesting, and has plenty of other possible uses. I really should figure out a local supply for such things.

---

edit:

Why so big ? 24x24x24 is huge for boolits, yes. That's a few thousand boolits ? Obviously wouldn't do that many at once -- but being able to powder coat and cook larger items could be handy & cool.

Otherwise, a $50 big toaster oven is prolly more practical for the average (and boring) joe.

[unfy]

Speaking of old stuff, I've got a large Ronco or Sunbeam Rotisserie (12x12x12 ?) that I love and use all the time. It's just a sheet metal shell, no insulation. Granted, it doesn't care quite that much about getting an 'even heat' within it's cooking department.