Real Accuracy (2 moa or less) with Coated Rifle Bullets at 1800 fps or greater.

[doctorggg]

Went to the range yesterday with my 1960s' era Savage 110 CL 30-06 and some heat treated linotype boolits coated with the Gold 1035 (3 coats), and Hornady gas checks. The boolit was Lee's 30 caliber 200gr RN sized .309". Powder was H1000 and a Winchester large rifle primer. Overall length was 3.19" . Range was 100 yards. 5 shots

Here are the results:
Charge Avg. Velocity Group Size
55 grs 2,354 fps 1.435"
56grs 2,396 fps 1.715"
57grs 2,427 fps 1.646"

Bore was very clean and shiny after shooting. This is the first time I have used this powder and it was amazing how clean the bore was.

Would love to see some pictures of the targets. Very nice shooting.

[leadman]

I'll go pull the targets out of the recycle and see if I can get them posted.

As a side note this morning I was using stripper to remove the finish on a stock. Had some Hi-Tek coated boolits close by so I thought I would see if the stripper affected the coating. Did not faze the coating one bit!

[Yodogsandman]

Any more results? I fully expected this one to become a sticky.

[David R]

SO FAR my best is with 30 cal 115 grain bullets purchased from Bayou bullets. These are powder coated gold.
12.o Promo AV 1825 SD 11. Group size 1 1/8 @ 50 yards, 3.5" @ 100 yards. Repeatable.
Savage 110 in 308.

Last night I took out 10 rams @ 100 yards in 10 shots with this gun.

I have 105 lbs of cast 30 cal bullets to powder coat. The stuff could be here today.

[Yodogsandman]

David R, 105 pounds...Wow! I'd suggest only coating what you need. You might decide you want to change things up as you develop your load. You don't want to end up with 105 pounds of boolits you can't or don't want to use. Don't ask me how I know....

[leadman]

Guess I forgot to post the pictures to go with my previous post #153 so here they are. I Hope.

Went to the range yesterday with my 1960s' era Savage 110 CL 30-06 and some heat treated linotype boolits coated with the Gold 1035 (3 coats), and Hornady gas checks. The boolit was Lee's 30 caliber 200gr RN sized .309". Powder was H1000 and a Winchester large rifle primer. Overall length was 3.19" . Range was 100 yards. 5 shots

Here are the results:
Charge Avg. Velocity Group Size
55 grs 2,354 fps 1.435"
56grs 2,396 fps 1.715"
57grs 2,427 fps 1.646"

Bore was very clean and shiny after shooting. This is the first time I have used this powder and it was amazing how clean the bore was.

Pictures loaded out of order again. First picture 55grs, second picture is 57grs, third picture is 56grs. Last picture is a duplicate of 55grs.

[HollowPoint]

Some of the groups on this thread show an awful lot of promise. The points of impact on some of the targets here seem to indicate that the testers may be stopping short of the full potential of their abilities as Powder Coaters and reloaders.

When I work up loads, even with store-bought jacketed bullets I'll get the kind of accuracy reflected by some of the targets shared in some of the responses here.

I mention this because as I increase my charge weights, generally speaking, I'll begin to get tighter clusters. When I get to the point that my clusters/groups are repeatable; at that point, I work on seating depths. I know I'm most likely mistaken but, it seems like the 1800 FPS listed in the OP's initial post may be subconsciously limiting some of you guys; even though he stated "1800 FPS or Higher."

How many of you are stopping when you get to the 1800 FPS levels and how many have deliberately tried to load to full power in an attempt to see if your groups would tighten up? I've read all the replies on this particular thread and it would seem the that answers to these two questions should be apparent to me but, they're not.

I haven't read all the other threads dealing with Powder Coating yet. I'm sure some of you guys have already tried what I'm eluding to. When I get up to speed on my own attempts at powder coating, I believe I'll start with minimum listed load data and work my way up rather than limiting myself to a certain max velocity; although ultimately the limiting factor in the best velocity I arrive at will be determined by accuracy. Out of a given caliber, that may very well be only 1800 FPS but, I'll never know if I could have done better if I'd just kept testing up to the max listed velocity.

I believe you guys are really onto something with this Powder Coating thing. I hope it pans out even further. It would really give all of us a leg up on the store bought bullet manufactures. To my way of thinking, the "Holy-Grail" of bullet casting is to be able to get our cast lead bullets to met or exceed the performance of the store bought jacketed bullets; I mean ballistically speaking. Powder Coating may just be the catalyst to achieving this goal.

HollowPoint

[xacex]

Hollowpoint,

As you can see from my groups they are round and not stringed indicates to me you are correct that once worked with OAl ect. that something should give. Unfortunately, as may of the posters on this thread I do not do this full time. It will take time, but your analysis is I believe correct. Not only that, but I think we can get accuracy beyond 1800 FPS equal to "bulk" jacketed bullets. I do not believe we will see accuracy of "match" bullets with this method. Sub MOA with PC on a regular basis from my observation is unobtainable.

Edit: As we have seen sub MOA is possible but I would like to see 3 groups on the same target that are under MOA for 5 shots. I don't care if there are 5-6 groups, and only 3 are sub MOA. That is a testament right there. I know I cannot do it so I propose the challenge to those who can. 1800FPS is the limit if you break it it is fine, but I would like to see 2200FPS or better. Let us up the ante to 2200 FPS, and 3 groups on the same target under that threshold.

[Beagle333]

I believe the application is the limiting issue. With hobbyist ESPC equipment, I know that I increase a boolit's diameter by .002±" with PC. But in my coatings, if I am really trying to get a good coat on the base bands of the boolits in the middle rows of my tray, the noses of the boolits on the outside will get quite a bit more powder. With the coating on the nose varying from .0005-" to .002+" in thickness on any side, and usually never by the same amount on both sides, it is going to be really hard to get the small boolits to travel that far, that fast, without deviating considerably. That is not a problem with a 260gr .45 slug at 900 fps, but until we can come up with a more uniform and consistent way to coat, the rifle groups are going to be tough to tighten up. And I believe that tumbling has even farther to go in the quest for reaching a perfectly symmetrical coat.
I have tried (the wasteful technique of) spraying a single widely-spaced row of rifle boolits to see if I could get a more uniform coating, but I am unable to repeat spray patterns, angles of application and duration of spraying needed to get that perfectly balanced thickness on all sides using my eyes as a gauge. Adding more to the complexity is the problem of a varying-thickness coating making a uniform crimp nearly impossible. The polyester is more springy than lead and and a variance of 4X (from .0005 to .002) in thickness on any one side will influence the final sized diameter when using the same die. And even if you don't crimp your rifle boolits, the neck tension will differ due to the diameter variance.

Despite the very slight variance of diameter on the sized boolits , I believe that the fellows who are shielding the noses when coating will be the first to achieve the accuracy goals. If they can completely eliminate the flashing in the transition from bare nose to coated driving bands, they will have an unaltered nose for the truest flight, the least added additional material that must be applied consistently to every boolit, and a slippery set of driving bands to do what we want PC to do, which is to slide down the barrel and leave nothing behind.

[Wardo1974]

The quest for accuracy is admirable, and of course a consistent product will get you closer. Until you can apply the PC consistently every time, it's going to be a weakness.

However, there is no chance these boolits are ever going to be as good as factory ones for the simple reason they are cast, not swaged (unless some of you guys are swaging their boolits, I didn't see that anywhere though)

The consistency of a swaged bullet is matchless and cannot be approached by a homebrew cast boolit. Even with a perfect PC I would expect the factory bullets to come out on top. Maybe though, not enough for us to care about. Me, I'm a hunter, not a target shooter, so as long as I get "minute of deer" with mine, I'm a happy guy.

[HollowPoint]

I haven't even dipped my foot into he PC craze yet. I've just been reading everything I can about it, trying to wrap my head around it before diving in.

In reading what I can about it, I've come to the conclusion that Beagle333 is most likely correct in his assumption that accuracy comes down to the even application of the powder coating. As with most things having to do with the attainment of bullet accuracy, concentricity is a major key.

I think that rigging up a mechanical jig/plate that rotates the individual bullets one full turn while simultaneously rotating the jig/ plate that the bullets are set on, one full turn would go a long way toward getting an even application of powder onto out bullets.

I've watched videos of guys applying the powder with their ES-guns and although they do a good job -think about it- they spray one side, then they turn the plate that holds the bullets around and spray the other side. This creates an over-lap on the sides that didn't get a direct spray of powder. Unless the bullets being sprayed are rotating in an even manner, it's difficult to get an even coat.

I hope to be getting a large format 3D printer in the near future. I think I'll work on designing such a jig plate. Even the most beautifully made PC bullets pictured in any of the post here in the PC section of this forum are sure to have uneven spots in their Powder Coated layers. When we combine this to even the slightest imperfections in our cast lead bullets and our re-loading technique, it stands to reason that we're bound to be getting less than desirable performance from an otherwise good idea.

It's akin to having a conventional copper jackets bullet with a copper jacket that's thicker on one side than the other.

The fact that some are getting good groups/accuracy indicates that there's alot of potential once all the bugs are worked out. I'd love to be able to quit using bullet lube and gas checks and still be able to shoot MOA or better groups.

Keep up the good work gentlemen.

HollowPoint

[leadman]

Remember, not all the boolits shot here are powder coated. I use the Hi-Tek coating. I do not worry about point of impact when testing loads as the poi will move around the target with different loads.
I have obtained equal group sizes and velocities to run of the mill jacketed bullets with a few of my loads, especially with the heavier boolits.
I am going to continue trying to shrink the groups of the 22 Bator boolit that I obtained the average velocity of 3,619 fps with but will have to discontinue shooting the 30 cal. boolits as my neck can not take the recoil.

One of the gun magazines ran some tests with jacketed bullets by altering the noses with a file and found that this caused very little change in the accuracy. When the altered the base there were large changes in the accuracy. Not sure how this would affect boolits.

[Yodogsandman]

I think the lighter the coating, the less thickness variations. No way to visually tell if the coating is thin on one side with a thick coating.

How about a PC'd boolit that gets swaged after a thin coating? Less surface thickness variation and perfect sizing of the whole boolit.

[ipijohn]

I think the lighter the coating, the less thickness variations. No way to visually tell if the coating is thin on one side with a thick coating.

How about a PC'd boolit that gets swaged after a thin coating? Less surface thickness variation and perfect sizing of the whole boolit.

Compressive strength of the PC is more than lead so all you will accomplish is making what ever geometry is there rounder and smaller.

[David R]

Todays fun was 5 shots 2 3/4" @ 100 yards with bayou bullets PC. 30 cal 115 gr bullet.

Pictures later.

[David R]

DavidR I think that is HiTek coated carbine boolit, unless you are PCing them. He has a couple coatings that will take that fps but you may need to heat treat to get much faster with accuracy. You shooting carbine or 308W?

Its a carbine bullet. What does it matter if its 30 cal and works. I buy these instead of cast my own.

Its like pistol bullets for the time it takes to load them and the cost.

[StromBusa]

we had some old "gang drill" mill heads by Zagar that would rotate numerous drills, I can picture the bullets rotating on them.....but then they would need transferred to the "cookie sheet" for baking...guess I'll have to invest in a painting robot.....

another option might be to coat the boolits complete, then turn the nose on a little cnc lathe....

[leadman]

Bayou Bullets are Hi-Tek coated. The 115gr carbine boolit is a plain base and this will limit the velocity. After I finish lunch I'll go test one as I do have some of his boolits. I think Donnie said he shoots the carbine boolit up to around 1,900 fps or so.

I do use light boolits sometimes, but if I want the finest accuracy I shoot boolits around 200grs in the 30 caliber and velocity of around 1,600 to 2,000 fps. depending on the cartridge.

I tested one of Bayou's boolits and it is 18BHN. Hard enough for "normal" cast boolit velocities.
If they work use them.

[David R]

Here is the promised photo.

5 shots 100 yards. 2 3/4" c to c.

Tonight my girlfriend will be shooting this rifle in the final silly wet match. My son may be shooting it also. I only brought 100 rounds.

Its a plain Jane Stevens250, identical to a Savage110 with a Wally world 3-9 AO scope.

[Bullshop]

What was the velocity of the rounds fired for the target?