Powder Coating Boolits

[bayjoe]

Dean
From your description it sounds like your powder coating might be a little heavy.
I size mine after coating just to make sure all my boolits are uniform
Another question would be, IF the bullets weren't aged would they shrink and cause leading?

[popper]

Dean. Try lowering the air pressure a tad and just puffing the powder from the side, then give a shot to the base. The nose gets coated but not thick. If nose gets too large it will hang in my lever & AR, not good. Plan on trying the piglet method but don't know if I can control the nose as well.

[bayjoe]

When I first pull the trigger on my powder coating gun, I hold it off the boolits. Then I only squeeze the trigger about half way and when it gets a nice low mist I coat the bullets. This works for me to give a nice uniform coat

[DeanWinchester]

Yeah, I think I got all excited and carried away. I'm going to pause for a bit until my .309 sizer comes in. Then I can size down and P/C back up again.

[DeanWinchester]

Hey! 35.0g of Varget under a 100g plain base boolit, powder coated in a Contender Super 14 30/30 gave mediocre accuracy but produced ZERO leading. In fact, the bore was cleaner AFTER shooting them. Previously I had shot some 200g spitzer boolits over 7.0g of Unique. After shooting the P/C boolits, the bore was shiny!

Powder coating WORKS! If they were gonna lead, I would think a case full of Varget and a plain base boolit wold do it. Don't you?

[popper]

10" bbl, so you get 1700+ fps? Still pretty good.

[DangerousDrummer]

My second attempt a accuracy using PC 160 gn .312 bullets in my Mosin was disappointing. About the best I could do was 4 in groups at 50 yds pushed by 37 gn I3031. I have now tried loads from 35.5 to 46 gn and the 37 was best. My typical load ladders are 5 ea at .5 gn intervals. Once I have the best , I then build 5 ea at .1 gn intervals covering a 1 gn spread. I unloaded all rounds of PC over 43 as 42.5s with the PC were not even on paper, with one even slapping the backing sideways.

Shooting Hornady 312 interlocks with 42.4 gns I3031 results in all bullets through the same hole at 50 yds. I do not think it is the PC, but likely just shooting cast at higher velocities. I need to find some tin to harden my ww lead which might help, although the same bullet copper plated shot 2 moa.

I am not giving up on this, as buying bullets @25 cents and over is expensive to shoot. My 420 gn PCs in my AR 458 still shoot with amazing accuracy, so the big slow bullets work well cast and PCed. I am ordering a 7/8 oz mold and rifled barrel for the Mossberg 500 so I will be casting and PCing shotgun slugs. I bet they will work well as the biggest complaint about slugs in a rifled barrel is leading, and I have had no leading with any PC bullets in any caliber. (no leading is worthless though, if you can't hit what you are aiming at)

Note: I did weigh each bullet and adjust every one to within .1 gn just to make sure that there was not a bullet weight difference.

[dverna]

DD

Why would you coat a slug? It is held by the wad until it exits the barrel - assuming you are using the Lee 7/8 oz slug.

Anyway, I have followed the PC, Piglet, and Hy-Tek threads and came to the conclusion that PC was to much of a PITA. My gut tells me Hy-Tek holds the most promise but only if it does the trick for getting over 2400 fps with accuracy and minimal leading.


Lastly, I wish to thank you for posting your results. There is a lot of talk about the good features of every method but not much data on accuracy - and for me - that is all that counts. A "pretty" bullet that does not lead is useless if it will not shoot. I do not get very much leading (if any) with pistol bullets so going through the gymnastics of having more equipment and a slower process offers no incentive to change.

I have no horse in this race but follow with interest.


Don Verna

[popper]

Dangerous - tin wouldn't do much to harden. I'm assuming GCd. Use sulfur or copper and antimony, WD after coating. IMHO you need the BHN of #2 but you can get it without the extra SB & Sn. My 1:10 308 with a case full of 4895 gives more stripping force than your larger case - slower twist mosin. Same with my 1:10 30-30.

[AverageJoe]

With 3 pans with 100 CB on each pan, baking 15-18 mins @ 375 deg. I am making about 400 bullets an hour. I can actually put 2 pans in at once, if I was real energetic. As far as I am concerned, this is the cat's meow. I water drop, so the set-up time moves right along.

[Russel Nash]

Federal already did it and dumped it. Federal Nyclad is the same thing from what I can tell. Gun ammunition also produced them. Attachment 74562Attachment 74563

I don't know why they got rid of them. Maybe it is to labor intensive for them to be profitable. I have read that the 125 grain 38 special were not +P and only made 825FPS. That, and the whole Black Talon thing with Winchester's coating may have made them shy away from anything that looked like it could go through a bullet proof vest.
That weird, I hit the back button while posting this and the photo's I put in are still there, and I cant dump them out.

I would think that a big outfit like Federal could use an "air bed" to powder coat bullets, in bulk. Probably about 10 pages back or maybe even more, I had brought up air beds, because to me, at least in my mind, to handle each boolit by hand is inefficient.

So I doubt it was a matter of the manpower used to NYCLAD the bullets at Federal. It's not like they were paying some guy $20 an hour to individually place boolits on a cookie sheet and placing the cookie sheet in a toaster oven. Just for the record, I have millwright'ed at Olin and Century Brassworks, so from my experience at least with "Winchester", nothing is done on a small scale.

[Russel Nash]

How are you guys doing boolits for rifle meant to go over 2,000 fps?

Do you use gas checks?

If so, do you powder coat first and then attach the gas checks?

Is accuracy really that bad without the gas check?

I am just trying to plan ahead with whatever .308-ish mould to buy for my AR in 7.62X39Russian.

[Russel Nash]

DD

Why would you coat a slug? It is held by the wad until it exits the barrel - assuming you are using the Lee 7/8 oz slug.

Anyway, I have followed the PC, Piglet, and Hy-Tek threads and came to the conclusion that PC was to much of a PITA. My gut tells me Hy-Tek holds the most promise but only if it does the trick for getting over 2400 fps with accuracy and minimal leading.


Lastly, I wish to thank you for posting your results. There is a lot of talk about the good features of every method but not much data on accuracy - and for me - that is all that counts. A "pretty" bullet that does not lead is useless if it will not shoot. I do not get very much leading (if any) with pistol bullets so going through the gymnastics of having more equipment and a slower process offers no incentive to change.

I have no horse in this race but follow with interest.


Don Verna

If there is one thing I have learned in life just in general, but more specifically with guns and reloading is that everything has its pro's and con's.

I'd trade off some accuracy for a cheaper boolit (bullet) that I can actually make myself, right NOW! versus a j-word bullet that has been on back order for 6 months.

EDIT: as far as DangerousDrummer buying a rifled slug barrel for the Mossberg 500, I was under the impression that you were supposed to shoot sabot slugs through a rifled barrel. I have taken apart the uber expensive sabot slugs, and IIRC, it was basically like a jacketed bullet meant for like a .375 H&H, captured inside a thicker plastic wad, which had hooks on it. These hooks or claws kept the bullet from departing from the wad/shell prior to loading or during the loading process, from mag tube, to lifter, to chamber. Then it was just the plastic wad that engaged the rifling.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[DCM]

I believe the rifled slug barrels are intended for sabots, But a good friend of mine has had Excellent results using full bore slugs out of his(better than mine with sabots at 1/2 the cost ).

[bangerjim]

How much crimp are you guys using on pistol casings with PC boolits? I have not been able to recover any slugs (indoor range) to see what is left and was wondering if too much crimp will scrape off the PC.

I am using a modest crimp now.

Please post your thoughts and what you have seen.

Bangerjim

[gds]

I have been following this thread for a while. I tried the tumbling method but had less than stellar results. I would get a descent batch but then could not repeat it. Finally broke down and bought the Harbor freight powder coating system. i am hooked

[AverageJoe]

GDS, welcome to the club...careful it's addictive.

[Russel Nash]

That would be cool for .300 blackout. One color for the subsonic rounds, a different color for the super sonics. Assuming the same weight or shape of boolit.

[LongGun1]

That would be cool for .300 blackout. One color for the subsonic rounds, a different color for the super sonics. Assuming the same weight or shape of boolit.

That is exactly what I have been thinking...

..color coding the various 300 BLK loads.

[gds]

my next goal is to do a bunch of the 160gr lee in the 4 colors that I have and load em up in .308 and then link them up for my 1919 alternating the colors.