Powder Coating Boolits

[wwboolitmaker]

The Sears pc gun works great. You can look at my earlier post in this thread and those were done with it. You can reuse old powder but it is suggested that you mix in virgin powder every time you reuse a batch of powder.

[popper]

Curious (again) is the 'fillet' cause by melted coating flowing or a buildup of powder accumulating before heating? For those of you with the PC guns, do they use a spark gap to ionize the powder, like a gas pilot lighter spark? Reading about another application method, heating to 250F or so and then dusting. Powder melts on hot surface, 'overspray' just drops to the bottom and can be reused. Tried my liquid poly coating again yesterday, air dried and then cooked @ 150F for 15 min. It add .002" to diam and sized fine but some spots scraped off as I didn't acetone clean them first. It is not as hard as the PC.

[wwboolitmaker]

It's from buildup at the base. I dont clean my boolits before spraying, I just warm, spray and then bake. Here is a .44 mag swc coated and then hammered flat, it cracked in a few places but it never let go. This stuff is tough!!!

[StratsMan]

News flash!!!

The price on the Craftsman powder coating system at Amazon.com has been reduced!!! Now only $28.99...

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D'oh!!! That price only applies if you open an Amazon Gift card... $10 off for that... sorry....

[Bad Water Bill]

I saw that one. He wanted $14.95 shipping. He also said only one left.

$39.99 was what I paid for mine with FREE shipping.

[popper]

OK, tried an experiment with the PC. First off, the powder was clumpy from the unopened jar. I heated 311165 CBs to ~400F and dusted with powder. Ugly I know, but served it's purpose. Back in the oven @ 450 for 10 min. Dumped in cold water. Powder stuck but didn't really melt when coated. Powder completely melted in 2nd pass. Coating did not crack or break when cooled and it was a THICK coating. Do NOT use in a convection style toaster oven. Suspect the BHN is up there with copper. Conclusion is that HT CBs will work OK. I do suspect a problem in getting accuracy. The coating is HARD. Any thickness variation would deform the lead when sized, possibly causing an unbalanced CB. Has anyone compared the accuracy for coated and uncoated for the same CB and load? I do think coating the base to the first lube groove would make a good GC.

[ryokox3]

OK, tried an experiment with the PC. First off, the powder was clumpy from the unopened jar. I heated 311165 CBs to ~400F and dusted with powder. Ugly I know, but served it's purpose. Back in the oven @ 450 for 10 min. Dumped in cold water. Powder stuck but didn't really melt when coated. Powder completely melted in 2nd pass. Coating did not crack or break when cooled and it was a THICK coating. Do NOT use in a convection style toaster oven. Suspect the BHN is up there with copper. Conclusion is that HT CBs will work OK. I do suspect a problem in getting accuracy. The coating is HARD. Any thickness variation would deform the lead when sized, possibly causing an unbalanced CB. Has anyone compared the accuracy for coated and uncoated for the same CB and load? I do think coating the base to the first lube groove would make a good GC.

I'm having trouble following this popper. Did you use a powder with a different melting point than the Harbor Freight stuff requiring the 450 degree cook time. HT cast boolits... What is HT?

[popper]

HT - heat treating to harden CBs. I used the HF PC. I heated them like normal HT (400F), dusted and back into the oven, then quench. I don't have a PC gun, applied by blowing through a straw (didn't work well, but an air brush may be better). Thick layer didn't melt on contact, but did when put back into the oven. When melted, it flows slowly (gravity) so I see where the 'fillet' comes from. Time to dust and put back into the oven was just a minute or so. CBs were inserted into holes in a block of wood, only the base to the lube groove was coated. This was a learning experiment for me, but I did find the coating is good when quenched. I also found that pre-heating makes the PC stick so the static gun might not be needed. Hope that helps.

[Bad Water Bill]

Years ago when my son fell in love (it didn't last long)with fishing I got him bottles of powder STUFF. You heated a jig head with a lighter and dipped it into the powder. Powder stuck to the head and you heated it again. It left a nice hard finish. I love the GLOW IN THE DARK powder. Use it on the house and car keys. Real easy to find the right one in the dark.

Now I have to wait till my Craftsman shows up to see if I have found a use for all of those colored bottles that have been gathering dust for YEARS.

[popper]

BWB - sort of what I'm trying, but I don't have a hook to hold on to. $4 for a bottle of PC is doable, $60 for a gun I may not need? Have to get more results from users to make that decision. If I can get 1-2 MOA with what I have, possibly adding another 1-2 MOA isn't good. I can see that for pistol it would be good, indoor range, lead-free hunting zones, etc. I'll play with it more and wait for results from others. I sized .311, one of the better ones, as cast .313. The base flattened and it didn't chip or scrape off even at the edge between PC and non-PC.

[ryokox3]

HT - heat treating to harden CBs. I used the HF PC. I heated them like normal HT (400F), dusted and back into the oven, then quench. I don't have a PC gun, applied by blowing through a straw (didn't work well, but an air brush may be better). Thick layer didn't melt on contact, but did when put back into the oven. When melted, it flows slowly (gravity) so I see where the 'fillet' comes from. Time to dust and put back into the oven was just a minute or so. CBs were inserted into holes in a block of wood, only the base to the lube groove was coated. This was a learning experiment for me, but I did find the coating is good when quenched. I also found that pre-heating makes the PC stick so the static gun might not be needed. Hope that helps.

That helps a lot, thank you. Supposedly my order from Harbor Freight will arrive on Saturday. I doubt I will have time to make and shoot any this weekend, but once I have range data I'll post it here for all. What I really want is to recover some from the berm. Those pics will be very interesting.

[Bad Water Bill]

What I really want is to recover some from the berm.

With the P C it should be very east to tell yours from all of the other STUFF in the berm.

[Jailer]

Range report time. I loaded up 20 rounds for the 300 blk bolt gun at 2 different loads, 15.3gr of H110 and 16.0gr H110. 5 of each load were gas checked 5 were shot without gas checks. The boolit used was the Lee 312-155-2R sized to .310 on all loads. The results were surprising.

First my known accurate load of 15.3gr H110. These were gas checked. Velocity was higher than lubed cast boolits of the same load level. My cast rounds run about 1800 FPS or so. These ran around 1870 FPS average. Accuracy was a little off from what I expected but there was no leading or deposits of any kind.



Next up was 16.0gr H110 gas checked sized to .310. This was another surpise as this is where my cast load falls apart accuracy wise. Velocity was higher here too normally running around 1870. These clocked in at around 1920 and shot great with no leading and again no deposits in the barrel. The one shot out of the group was the third shot. I bumped the trigger before I was settled and sent it flying. I think I'm going to have to add a bit more on the trigger spring as I did this twice today with this gun. I love the light trigger but it's a little too easy to trip.



Next we have 15.3gr H110 no gas checks. This was horrible. only 3 shots on target and I have no idea where the others went. Velocity was around 1870 FPS. Good news though, no leading or deposits at all from this load.



And last but not least 16.0gr H110 no gas check sized to .310. Again horrible accuracy with 2 shots off paper somewhere. Velocity was around 1950 average. This one though left a bit of leading in the last inch or so of the barrel just before the muzzle. At least I know where the limit is now.

[Ken73]

So by the sounds of it, it still needs a gas check for the higher velocities; though the coating apparently held up and functioned as a lubricant/jacket. Makes me wonder if a plain base boolit would work?

[Jailer]

I dare say if you did a plain base boolit with the base coated it would shoot great. The only reason I got leading from the ones I did is they were a near max load and the lead base was exposed.

Maybe coating some plain base boolits nose down?

[ryokox3]

Those are some nice results, and very encouraging. Did you crimp on the gas checks before or after coating? Do you think either way would make a difference?

[Ken73]

Why not leave the aluminum foil that gets stuck on the bottom? Wondering if it was the "fillet" at the bottom that was affecting your accuracy for the non-checked version. Did you trim it off?

[ryokox3]

ok, getting tired before going to bed, but got one last dumb thought for the night. Take a hardwood board, or other setup (plate with welding) anything capable of taking 20 min in 400 degrees, with some finishing nails pointing up, either through that hardwood or welded to the plate. Torch the nails till they are red hot and stick the GC style boolits on them (without checks of cource). I do not see a fillet forming in this method. The torch heat allows the boolit to go onto the nail and stick there for coating. Should be able to just pull them off then. Also the powder will coat some of those nails, but not the very tops or bottoms of the nails, so you should be able to re-use the nails. I'm thinking a bonus would be getting some ofthe base coated also, so even with max loads you would not need the gc.

[popper]

Jailer - good work. What is your alloy, ACWW with some Sn? You indicate that your full bore load group opens up PC or normal, the same but fps is ~ 50 higher for all loads. Are you going to try to quench (HT) some for the next test? You results non-GC'd or GC is about what I see, need the base covered for HV. So you've validated PC is a good rifle lube replacement, to let's say 2k fps. My triggers run about 4# - I don't like them too light.

[Jailer]

Why not leave the aluminum foil that gets stuck on the bottom? Wondering if it was the "fillet" at the bottom that was affecting your accuracy for the non-checked version. Did you trim it off?

I didn't trim anything off the base of the ones I shot. None of them had any that needed trimming from what I could see.

Jailer - good work. What is your alloy, ACWW with some Sn? You indicate that your full bore load group opens up PC or normal, the same but fps is ~ 50 higher for all loads. Are you going to try to quench (HT) some for the next test? You results non-GC'd or GC is about what I see, need the base covered for HV. So you've validated PC is a good rifle lube replacement, to let's say 2k fps. My triggers run about 4# - I don't like them too light.

They are all air cooled wheel weights with a touch of tin. I have tried some water dropped and saw no difference in accuracy at any velocity. The powder coated boolits at 16.0gr did shoot accurately enough but my lubed bullets don't.