simple Hi-Tek coating

[HI-TEK]

Well I am really happy. I now am a subscriber to the magazine, Handloader for a 12 month period.
Great articles. Thanks all for the assistance. Much appreciated.

[glockfan]

anyone has been through this article on hitek VS lubed boolits?

sorry if it's been posted, i just fell on it and found it extremely interesting except when they call hi tek ''polymer'' haha.

in brief,hi tek gets you a tad slower speeds and on par accuracy,if not better accuracy compared to lubed .

https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2017/...r-handloaders/

[Gremlin460]

<-------- Slides silentlly into the room and hope no-one notices.

[Tazza]

I SEE YOU

Welcome to the conversation, you have been spoken about, only good things i might add.

[Ausglock]

Welcome back, Grem.
I heard you won the lottery and were travelling around the world.
What happened??? Ya run out of money??? lol

[Gremlin460]

Ran out of women.

[Gremlin460]

**** it! dont ruin my bad rep, its taken years to get that.

[Tazza]

hehehe nice.

When people sign on to my steel challenge i feel i must have a bad rep too. We run two matches at once and switch over at half time. People ask which sheet to go on, i just say if you want to shoot with one person or not with another, choose that way. Some ask what side i'm running, then they choose the other....... Should i be offended? They do it with a big grin though, so i don't yet have to cry myself to sleep.

[Gremlin460]

Forgive me Hi-tek for I have sinned..
I have not cast for over 12 months
I also have not deprimed any brass for over 12 months.

The reason for this, I shamelessly admit is because I have Soooooooo much brass I havent needed too, and last year I went
ape-shyt and cast/coated over 14 months supply. Ha!

In saying that over the last 3 days I have deprimed 8000 cases and 1/3rd have been wet tumbled.
I must say de-priming brass has now become the most tedious procces of reloading. It used to be sizing that was the holder of that title.
Some time in the next week or so I will drag out the casting pot and my faithfull laddle and start casting again.
I still have a NIB CBE mold that I am still toying with sending back to CBE and having the lube grooves removed before I use it.

The reason for this post is to ask, how many guys now are casting grooveless compared to grooved?

[glockfan]

The reason for this post is to ask, how many guys now are casting grooveless compared to grooved?

i'm quite new to casting, so bought 4 molds to start with ; none has grooves lol.

[Tazza]

I still cast with grooves as people seem to be old school and think they are needed. I think for the 125 con rn i cast, the extra bearing surface of a no lube groove projectile would be better. Some guns will not stabilize them, but the round nose they do as there is more bearing surface, even with a lube groove.

Some of the people i sell to use them for western action, so they need the lube grooves for crimping.

Personally i'd rather not have lube grooves as they will fall from the mould easier.

I have a worn out 125con rn mould i'd like to tinker with and make a custom one with no lube grooves, see if i ever get to it.

[dikman]

A chap in my club makes molds (among other things), when another member asked him to make a .38 mold without lube grooves I got one too - 4-gang, RNFP, brass with crimp groove only.

[Ausglock]

I run both. But mainly grooveless.

[Grmps]

Both shoot about the same, BUT, it's much easier to re-sell a mold with lube groves.

[HI-TEK]

[QUOTE=Gremlin460;4394269]Forgive me Hi-tek for I have sinned..
I have not cast for over 12 months
I also have not deprimed any brass for over 12 months.


WHAT???????? no casting for 12 months, you should be whipped with Cat and Nine tails. That is unforgiveable. Now repent and start casting, it will repair your soul....lol

[cityofthesouth]

Been clicking through all the pages I have missed since I last visited and saw some talk about using old, dried up coating. I do this every time I get ready to coat. I tumble in a Tupperware type container and mix my coating in a clear ketchup/mustard looking bottle. Both are usually coated with dried out mix, and a gummy glob at the bottom of my bottle. I rinse all the flaky stuff off the inside of my tumble container with acetone and dump that into my bottle, then slosh that around until the glob at the bottom dissolves, add new mix to it and proceed to coating. No problems, no waste. I don't even worry about the ratio anymore. As long as it's not too heavy on the powder it's good to go. I figure that out on the fist coating. If it gases off too quickly, just add more acetone. I like it watery, so I rarely have this issue.

Other random observations:

After casting and coating 5 figures worth of bullets since I started doing it I only just got to shoot them over a chrono for the first time recently. I found out my 125gr 9mm loads are doing 1140 out of my 4.5" CZ P09 barrel. Obviously, I will be backing off the gas because all I gotta do is make 125 power factor. So the 1140 load has been 3.6gr of TiteGroup with a 1.08 OAL and 125gr bullet. More chrono testing this weekend.

That leads me to my next point. The Lee 125gr mold without lube grooves just isn't correctly made in my opinion for coating purposes (many have realized this of course already). It's true that I may get a thicker coat than other people, or even thicker than necessary (keeping in mind that I still size .356 but this is in reference to adding thickness to the ogive). But it falls into the fiddly category when I have to keep what is an imprecise process within a couple thousandths tolerances. I have yet to find a single 9mm barrel that will take these bullets loaded longer than 1.08 and it is very common for that to be too long. Is it really an issue? No. I am changing my load to 1.065 OAL at 3.2gr of TiteGroup in order to get these bullets to fit in everything. I think the only real concern (other than pressure) is feeding. I believe 3.2gr will get me closer to my 125 power factor goal (somewhere around 1050 FPS) so the pressure isn't an issue and so far they appear to feed fine and shoot well. I will certainly be working up some powder puff loads for my 10.5" 9mm carbine barrel.

Also noticed some talk about the Lee 9mm Factory Crimp die. I gotta say, I have found it to be 100% pointless. By simply screwing the seating die into the correct depth (which I then mark so that I can just throw the die in and go) I am able to consistently achieve .378-.379 case mouth diameter. I found that I could get rounds to stick in some barrels by leaving the case mouths ~.381. I then use a previously loaded round to set the fine adjustment, measure the first few rounds and tweak as necessary. In other words, increase, decrease the depth of the die itself to put the case in spec, then use the fine adjust for bullet depth (a solid piece of advice from another member here). This is why I have mostly abandoned 358 bullets - you have to get your case mouth in spec, which is going to squish the bullet at least some ... like the 2 thousandths I was trying to achieve by sizing them 2 thousandths larger in the first place.

Also, I now have a polygonal barrel to test with. Initial testing looks good. 1.08 OAL loads won't plunk which is what lead to the 1.065 load.

TanfoglioStockIII_4 by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

Also wanted to add that my chrono tests revealed a 9 FPS standard deviation using all cheapo Lee equipment. That seems pretty good to me.

[HI-TEK]

[QUOTE=cityofthesouth;4395296]Been clicking through all the pages I have missed since I last visited and saw some talk about using old, dried up coating. I do this every time I get ready to coat. I tumble in a Tupperware type container and mix my coating in a clear ketchup/mustard looking bottle. Both are usually coated with dried out mix, and a gummy glob at the bottom of my bottle. I rinse all the flaky stuff off the inside of my tumble container with acetone and dump that into my bottle, then slosh that around until the glob at the bottom dissolves, add new mix to it and proceed to coating. No problems, no waste. I don't even worry about the ratio anymore. As long as it's not too heavy on the powder it's good to go. I figure that out on the fist coating. If it gases off too quickly, just add more acetone. I like it watery, so I rarely have this issue.


Thanks for your input.Looks like you optimised your coating usage well.

You have confirmed, that the coating can be re-used even if it is dried up after solvent evaporates.
You also confirmed that making mixes that can be a little more dilute than normal works just fine and dries quick, and less problems with baking as first coat dries easily if not too thickly applied.
Many simply add solvent to coating container when there is a build up of coating, and re-dissolve dry residues, and use this as first coat.
The stuff simply can be recycled, but only if it has not been heat set.

[cityofthesouth]

[QUOTE=HI-TEK;4396379]

Been clicking through all the pages I have missed since I last visited and saw some talk about using old, dried up coating. I do this every time I get ready to coat. I tumble in a Tupperware type container and mix my coating in a clear ketchup/mustard looking bottle. Both are usually coated with dried out mix, and a gummy glob at the bottom of my bottle. I rinse all the flaky stuff off the inside of my tumble container with acetone and dump that into my bottle, then slosh that around until the glob at the bottom dissolves, add new mix to it and proceed to coating. No problems, no waste. I don't even worry about the ratio anymore. As long as it's not too heavy on the powder it's good to go. I figure that out on the fist coating. If it gases off too quickly, just add more acetone. I like it watery, so I rarely have this issue.


Thanks for your input.Looks like you optimised your coating usage well.

You have confirmed, that the coating can be re-used even if it is dried up after solvent evaporates.
You also confirmed that making mixes that can be a little more dilute than normal works just fine and dries quick, and less problems with baking as first coat dries easily if not too thickly applied.
Many simply add solvent to coating container when there is a build up of coating, and re-dissolve dry residues, and use this as first coat.
The stuff simply can be recycled, but only if it has not been heat set.

Yep for sure. It took me a few coating sessions to realize this. What really put me on to it is that over many sessions my Tupperware gets a heavy build up of coating in the corners where I dump the bullets out onto my trays. This coating would flake off occasionally and cause lumps or globs on my bullets. While cleaning it off I realized it just turns back into mix, so I tried it, no issues at all and I've been doing that ever since. I have also learned that lumps and imperfections on 9mm pistol bullets really has very little negative effect down range. Sure, they aren't bullseye bullets but they will still make 2-3 inch groups at 20 yards and that's plenty good enough for me.

Although, this is a 20 yard, 5 shot group from my 9mm AR with my bullets.AR9_CastCoatedTG by city_ofthe_south, on Flickr

I do like a thin mix. I like having the handful of extra seconds to tumble and I think it comes out smoother. I am also water quenching on the 3rd coat, mainly because I recall some reports that you get some hardness back and it makes me feel good. I have no factual data on the subject though, other than the coating doesn't seem to mind.

This chrono I got to work is one from a friend that apparently never worked right. I thought I had it figured out but it wouldn't read a single shot yesterday. But the 3.2gr TiteGroup at 1.065 OAL shot fine from all my guns, for whatever that's worth. If any of you know the trick to making the old CED Millennium (M1?) chrono actually work correctly, let me know. I get the impression they were complete garbage but if I can make it work that's great. I cleaned the sensor and lenses and shot it under a pop-up canopy, which worked the first time, but it did nothing the second time. I set it up in an identical way, same location, same hot sunny day, same canopy, same everything.

[ioon44]

"I cleaned the sensor and lenses and shot it under a pop-up canopy, which worked the first time, but it did nothing the second time. I set it up in an identical way, same location, same hot sunny day, same canopy, same everything."

That is why I bought a LabRadar chrono.

[Graakall]

Coated 50 kilograms 230 grainers in about 2 hours.
7,5 + kgs on each tray.
2. Time coating and sucsess all the way.

Could probably reduce baketime as the thermostat switched off at the 3 minute mark every tray.

Thanks for all the knowhow guys.
G