simple Hi-Tek coating

[Liberty'sSon]

Need a little help, coated some tonight. Black coating 5-1-7 ratios, triple coated, coated at 385f for 9 minutes each time. Passed wipe test after first and third coats, but it is flaking after the smash test. on first coating it went to about 410f for about 30 seconds and I open the door for 10-15 seconds to get temp down to 375 range. All temp verified by lead therm in oven. The only thing I have read that causes brittleness/ flaking is high temps, but surely the 30 seconds at 410f wouldn't do that. The only thing I can think is that I didnt wait an extended period before the smash test, basically till bullets could be held in my bare hand. I will check them again in the am. Any ideas folks?

[dsa]

What color is getting the best result in open guns?

[golfhack]

I had a similar problem and thought at first that the temperature was too high. Turned out it was because I had applied the coating to bullets that had already been sized. This smoothed and sealed out the surface, making it difficult for the coating to adhere. The result was coating that flaked off and leading in the barrel. When I tried it again on unsized bullets (size after coating/baking), the coating worked fine.

Need a little help, coated some tonight. Black coating 5-1-7 ratios, triple coated, coated at 385f for 9 minutes each time. Passed wipe test after first and third coats, but it is flaking after the smash test. on first coating it went to about 410f for about 30 seconds and I open the door for 10-15 seconds to get temp down to 375 range. All temp verified by lead therm in oven. The only thing I have read that causes brittleness/ flaking is high temps, but surely the 30 seconds at 410f wouldn't do that. The only thing I can think is that I didnt wait an extended period before the smash test, basically till bullets could be held in my bare hand. I will check them again in the am. Any ideas folks?

[Ausglock]

you are probably putting the first coat on far too thick. Don't use so much. Also. Bake for a full 10 minutes.

[Ausglock]

What color is getting the best result in open guns?

Any of the metallics. Gold, Red Copper, Pearl Yellow, Glitter Bronze.

I'm firing some 125gr RN in the SVI racegun tomorrow. Coated with 2 coates of blue/green with Experimental resin 1 and with Resin 2 (Superhard)

[Gremlin460]

Convert #1 accomplished.
Brought a friend home after the range today, showed him how I cast the 132gn RN. Let him have a go for 15 mins. we dropped just over 250 and called it quits, then moved on to the ease of coating. Coated the 250 in one go and fired them through the oven .
Sized them and recoated, but didn't have time to bake the second round.

His missus is expecting their first so was called away. He is sold 100% wants to do this and is locked into using HiTek... I think we should get a commission.. 500ml of coating free in the next order... Joe.

[Ausglock]

Grem. I have a heap of coatings here that coat and bake fine, but the colours are horrible. I was going to tip them out. You want them? I'll have to run it past HI-TEK.
I'm heading to Brisbane next Friday to pickup some alloy from Northern smelters at Woodridge.

[plinker]

That would be great news. I would appreciate a follow up.

[Paul4895]

Ok, I've been following this thread and have re-read all 85 pages twice and I want to try it. The question I have is how much is a part? I know a lot of you coat 250 to 300 bullets at a time and I see that you use 5-1-10. But how much is the 5...1/4 ounce,? 1/4 or 1/2 tsp? I'm confused as to the individual ratio's used and I'm trying to get my head around this before I order the Hi-Tek. Thx, Paul

[Love Life]

Where in northern Nevada are you?

For parts I use a glass measuring cup and the teaspoon measurement.

5-6 TSP of color, 1 TSP of catalyst, and 9-10 TSP of acetone. BTW I need some more acetone...

[btroj]

I use 5 parts color, 1 part catalyst, 7 parts acetone. As long as you keep the ratio it doesn't matter what you measure with. I use a tablespoon measure, I could just as easily use a quart can.

Measure everything with the same measure and it doesn't matter, only the ratio matters.

[Paul4895]

Love Life, how many bullets do you coat with the ratio your using? I'm in Minden

[Love Life]

I reckon I get about 500 or so. I think... I never counted. I cast with a 5 or 6 cavity for an hour, and coat whatever amount that comes to be.

I'm over in Wellington if you want to play with the process 1st hand to get a feel for it.

[Ausglock]

As stated above it doesn't matter what you use to measure, so long as you use the same thing for each ingredient.
I use a shot glass type measure marked off in mls.

50mls of colour, 10mls of catalyst and 70mls of acetone.

Easy.

Spoons, and ounces do my head in. Too old school imperial. Metric is far easier to calculate...

[Gremlin460]

Grem. I have a heap of coatings here that coat and bake fine, but the colours are horrible. I was going to tip them out. You want them? I'll have to run it past HI-TEK.
I'm heading to Brisbane next Friday to pickup some alloy from Northern smelters at Woodridge.

Thanks but I think I will pass on the yucky colours, BUT you are more than welcome to ring 0433409335 when you get up here and if I am not buried in work we can meet up and have a coffee at my place. Woodridge is a 3-4 min drive.
You can check out my system and see if there is obvious faults with it. Saves me learning months from now what bits I have got wrong.

[Gremlin460]

Ok, I've been following this thread and have re-read all 85 pages twice and I want to try it. The question I have is how much is a part? I know a lot of you coat 250 to 300 bullets at a time and I see that you use 5-1-10. But how much is the 5...1/4 ounce,? 1/4 or 1/2 tsp? I'm confused as to the individual ratio's used and I'm trying to get my head around this before I order the Hi-Tek. Thx, Paul

Paul it depends of how manny casts you are going to coat. To be honest if you are coating under 1 or 2 thousand, you are going to end up throwing some mixture away. simply because you use so little!.
Go to a chemist and grab some syringes, the sell them for mere cents. easiest way to measure.

I personally grabbed a small bottle , about the size of a alox bottle from the cheap shop, I measured with a tape 3.5 centimeters and put a dot on the bottle, then 2.5 centimeters put anonther mark and then half a centimeter and put a 3rd dot. So you end up with 3 dots stacked in a line. 3.5 is 7 x .5 fill to this dot with acetone. 2.5 up from there is 5 x .5 fill to this mark with colour, and last above is a dot at .5 which you fill to with catalyst. then put top on and shake like hell to mix. so your end result is 5-1-7.
In a alox sized bottle the this will give you more than enough for 1000 to 1500 double coatings.
I have stored this in a fridge for more than 2 weeks and it still works well if you can keep it cool.
Hope this helps.

[zomby woof]

I bought a plastic measuring spoon set. Depending on how many boolits I have to coat I use a different size spoon. Teaspoon, tablespoon etc...

[leadman]

I shot the 120gr Saeco 30 cal RN GC yesterday in the 30-06 using H4895. These boolits were about 14 BHN after coating so I did not expect very high velocity with them. The accuracy was very poor as the boolit won't even come close to the throat in my Savage 110DL. There was one group at about 40 grs and 2,500 fps velocity that did cluster into a 1/2" group at 100 yards but then the addition of 1 more grain of powder in the next load blew the grouping apart. That group was about 6" and the additional 2 groups of 1 grain each kept spreading. The group that was shot after the 1/2" group also had a trace of the light gray smoke leaving the muzzle and the additional groups increased this smoke.
This is confirmation of what I had found on previous experiments that this is the point the strength of the alloy is overcome with the pressure of the burning powder.
This was not as easy to identify when I was using a wax based lube that normally had smoke from firing. Now that the smoke from the lube is non-existant this point is easy to identify. I have seen this when shooting my SBH Hunter in 41 mag with 8 BHN boolits in very stout loads.
Even though there was smoke coming out of the barrel there was no trace of leading so the coating is doing the job.

Just something to look for especially if one is trying to increase the velocity with boolits soft enough for hunting purposes.

[Dystaxia]

Ok, I've been following this thread and have re-read all 85 pages twice and I want to try it. The question I have is how much is a part? I know a lot of you coat 250 to 300 bullets at a time and I see that you use 5-1-10. But how much is the 5...1/4 ounce,? 1/4 or 1/2 tsp? I'm confused as to the individual ratio's used and I'm trying to get my head around this before I order the Hi-Tek. Thx, Paul

Paul4895,

Syringes are your friends!!! I use them to mix up my ratio of 5-1-10, 5 parts red copper, 1 part catalyst and 10 parts acetone. For 200 45acp boolits, I use 10cc's of "mix" per coat, 3 coats. Therefore I need 30 cc's of mix, so I'll do a 20-2-10 which gives me 32 cc's of mix. Kept in an airtight bottle it will last awhile. I usually just keep adding to the bottle, so I never really throw any of it away. For 9mm, I use about 5 cc's of mix per coat. Hope that helps.

[Liberty'sSon]

you are probably putting the first coat on far too thick. Don't use so much. Also. Bake for a full 10 minutes.

Trevor, I've coated before and definitely went too thick on first coat. This time I tried to avoid that. It was a lot of 100 Boolits a friend gave me unlubed from a local supplier. I used between 2-2.5 ml of mixed 5-1-7 for each of the three coats. By my calculations that should coat about 20000 Boolits with three coats for a liter kit. Does that still sound like too thick? Or are my calculations off. The first coat after cooking was still transparent and passed the wipe test great. Right now I'm leaning more towards thinking that the commercial caster sized the Boolits but didn't lube them as the cause. However I would like your input on a good ratio of mixed coating per number of Boolits or possibly weight of Boolits. I'm not sure of the best way to calculate this as for different bullets the surface area to volume/weight ratios are different. Ie 1000 grams of 115 grain 9mm has more surface area than 1000 grams of 230 grain 45 ACP. I'm probably over thinking this but I'd like a way to get proper coating that will stick without wasting coating.