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

[zomby woof]

This guy in his 13 minute video calls it "bullet yaw":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKbbu...e_gdata_player

and to think all this time I was carefully assembling components without this knowledge. It made my head hurt. I think I'll just go back to what I was doing. It seemed to work.

[HollowPoint]

Back in the day we used to call that issue having the bullet "going to sleep" - I had a friend with a 300 win mag bench gun (metallic pink no less)
and his groups at 100 yards were worse than the same loads at 200 yards. 2 moa at 100 and 1 moa at 200 essentially.

This is exactly the phenomenon I experienced shooting the loads I eluded to with my K31. The bullets I was shooting were cast with the NOE 198 grain spitzer gas-checked bullet mold. I was using a 16.8 grain charge of 2400 on top of magnum large rifle primers.

I did try modifying one of the cavities so that it cast Boat-Tailed Gas-Checked bullets that weighed in several grains heavier but was unable to get the same accuracy as the plain base spitzer configuration at either 100 or 200 yards.

My initial groups shooting bullets cast as they were intended gave me MOA accuracy at a hundred yards so, I was thrilled when I shot at two hundred yards and got 1.5".. Go figure...

HollowPoint

[leadman]

Using the Hi-Tek coating on the 22 caliber boolits lead me to using only linotype and if I wanted over about 3,000 fps I had to heat treat the lino. After the heat treat, then coating and water quenching I ended up with about 32 BHN. I weighed boolits after coating to plus or minus .25grs.
I fired these in my Contender 23" bull barrel at 3,619 fps average and there was no leading and accuracy met the 2 moa. I think there is some velocity left to be had with this alloy but I ran out of case capacity as I was heavily compressing the H4895 in the 223 Rem.

Maybe snuffy can try this with pc and see what happens.

[Mr Humble]

I guess it's fun to try and change the parameters which cast bullets have operated under for 100+ years, but other than fun why bother ? I always thought shooting cast was designed to be inexpensive, accurate fun not building a reactor. With all this dropping in water (dangerous) baking in ovens (lead fumes in food is no good) and coating with substances, the effect of which is unknown, it seems to this old dummy that the prize is not worth the quest. If I want to shoot a 180 gr .308 bullet at 2900 fps, I load up any of my 4 300 H&Hs with TSXs and RL25. It's accurate and kills very well. If a dueling tree or a 300 yard gong is out there, a plain old Lyman #2 .311 gas checked wheel weight bullet at 1500 fps is cheap, easy and effective from a 308 to 300RUM.

All reminds me if the Man of LaMancha......

[snuffy]

I guess it's fun to try and change the parameters which cast bullets have operated under for 100+ years, but other than fun why bother ? I always thought shooting cast was designed to be inexpensive, accurate fun not building a reactor. With all this dropping in water (dangerous) baking in ovens (lead fumes in food is no good) and coating with substances, the effect of which is unknown, it seems to this old dummy that the prize is not worth the quest. If I want to shoot a 180 gr .308 bullet at 2900 fps, I load up any of my 4 300 H&Hs with TSXs and RL25. It's accurate and kills very well. If a dueling tree or a 300 yard gong is out there, a plain old Lyman #2 .311 gas checked wheel weight bullet at 1500 fps is cheap, easy and effective from a 308 to 300RUM.

All reminds me if the Man of LaMancha......

You can be an old-stick-in-the-mud if you want to. If I were to follow that reasoning, I'd still be in the snail mail, corded telephone world of the 50's. I'm glad I got my first computer in '98, and got my first calculator in '75. Not wanting to try something new has held man back for years.

I resisted the coating process because I don't have the space for a spray booth. I would have had to buy a compressor, and do it outside if at all. Along came the tumble process, that I can and have done.

A lot of experiments yet to do to finally nail down just what works and what don't with the coating process. To me, that is what keeps me active, looking for results with a new process. There's even many variations of the coating process, hi-tek, epoxy, and the plain old powder coating. Then divide powder coating into 2, A, sprayed with electrostatic charge or B, tumble in a bowl or tumbler. Then the many types/makers and colors of the powder coatings.

You STILL have to size, often only after the coating process is done. I suspect,(but have yet to prove), that we can drive softer alloys faster with powder coatings, than with slippery lubes. What remains to be seen is if that also results in accurate boolits, small groups. I think Lee's alloy strength limits may well apply here, if the alloy will not stand up to the pressure, it won't matter what the coating does. IOW, if the alloy gives/slumps under pressure resulting in an out of balance boolit, it doesn't matter if it does that while NOT leading the bore.

I can understand not wanting to change if you're having great success with traditionally lubed boolits that are great shooters and do what you want. I also look at about 1k worth of lubrisizers and dies that I already have that may never get used again. I CAN use the Lyman sizers to size the coated boolits using the perfessors nose first die to hold them, already have!

[RP]

Coating lead with something will go away its just a crazy ideal people are doing next thing you hear about is plating boolits and even putting copper and brass wraps on them. You crazy kids kill me lol. Do not even get me started on this smokeless power ideal like who really thinks gunpowder will not smoke.

[Faret]

Do not even get me started on this smokeless power ideal like who really thinks gunpowder will not smoke.

It does smoke just less.

[runfiverun]

Mr. Humble.
I believe you need a little more education on this cast boolit shooting thing.

lead into water= not dangerous
water into lead = dangerous.

fumes from an oven at 400-f not gonna happen.
fumes from lead at 1 bajillion degrees where it's boiling is possible.
but your boolits are pretty useless at that point and your house is probably on fire too, so a little bit of "fumes" are at the bottom of your worry list right about then.

if you are gonna go through all the trouble of making good boolits and adding in the cost of gas checks then 1500 fps is a waste of time and effort.
you might as well lower the velocity a little more and use plain ol flat based boolits, or put in slightly more effort then go ahead and shoot them to their full potential.

[MostlyOnThePaper]

I guess it's fun to try and change the parameters which cast bullets have operated under for 100+ years, but other than fun why bother ? I always thought shooting cast was designed to be inexpensive, accurate fun not building a reactor. With all this dropping in water (dangerous) baking in ovens (lead fumes in food is no good) and coating with substances, the effect of which is unknown, it seems to this old dummy that the prize is not worth the quest. If I want to shoot a 180 gr .308 bullet at 2900 fps, I load up any of my 4 300 H&Hs with TSXs and RL25. It's accurate and kills very well. If a dueling tree or a 300 yard gong is out there, a plain old Lyman #2 .311 gas checked wheel weight bullet at 1500 fps is cheap, easy and effective from a 308 to 300RUM.

All reminds me if the Man of LaMancha......

Thought occurs that if this topic is of no interest to you that there are literally thousands of others here that might be, rather than trolling this one. Just because some of the techniques are outside your comfort zone doesn't mean they aren't valid. Just saying.

Pretty much every thread regarding baking for example has more than one post reminding us all that your food oven should NOT be used and baking them in the kitchen/indoors is discouraged.

[GhostHawk]

Mr Humble, it seems to me that you should be very happy shooting Jacketed Bullets. Go forth and enjoy!

Cast is not for everyone.

[dverna]

Mr. Humble.
I believe you need a little more education on this cast boolit shooting thing.

lead into water= not dangerous
water into lead = dangerous.

fumes from an oven at 400-f not gonna happen.
fumes from lead at 1 bajillion degrees where it's boiling is possible.
but your boolits are pretty useless at that point and your house is probably on fire too, so a little bit of "fumes" are at the bottom of your worry list right about then.

if you are gonna go through all the trouble of making good boolits and adding in the cost of gas checks then 1500 fps is a waste of time and effort.
you might as well lower the velocity a little more and use plain ol flat based boolits, or put in slightly more effort then go ahead and shoot them to their full potential.

A perfect response....... But back to the issue at hand.

I had really hoped for more success stories. A few people have done well with coated bullets at rifle velocities but it appears to be difficult to achieve good accuracy with coated bullets. Far more difficult than say paper patched bullets. In general, it appears that coated bullets are no better than traditionally lubed/GC'ed bullets in terms of accuracy. Nothing wrong with that!!!! There are some nice advantages like cleaner shooting and it possible they will suffer less from first shot out of the group issues - but not enough testing to confirm this.

Life issues have gotten in the way of my hopes to do testing this year, but I now feel even more convinced that for my needs I will stay with traditional lubes for rifle shooting. One significant advantage of coated bullets is that there is no lube bleed during hot storage conditions. That is important to me for pistol ammo and I am weighing using either BBDT or Hi-Tek. I like the proven performance (20 years) of Hi-Tek but BBDT has the advantage of long shelf life of the powder.

Yet, in a way, I do agree with some of what Mr. Humble says. If I want to push rifle bullets fast and get good accuracy with good terminal performance, it is so much easier to do so with the modern jacketed bullet. It may be "fun" to do that with lead bullets - but it surely is not cost effective for the handful of hunting bullets most of us use.

Before anyone piles on. I have over 40,000 cast bullets (and yes some are rifle bullets) in my inventory. Nothing wrong with cast bullets - but there is nothing wrong with J's either.

Don Verna

[DR Owl Creek]

A perfect response....... But back to the issue at hand.

I had really hoped for more success stories. A few people have done well with coated bullets at rifle velocities but it appears to be difficult to achieve good accuracy with coated bullets. Far more difficult than say paper patched bullets. In general, it appears that coated bullets are no better than traditionally lubed/GC'ed bullets in terms of accuracy. Nothing wrong with that!!!! There are some nice advantages like cleaner shooting and it possible they will suffer less from first shot out of the group issues - but not enough testing to confirm this.

Life issues have gotten in the way of my hopes to do testing this year, but I now feel even more convinced that for my needs I will stay with traditional lubes for rifle shooting. One significant advantage of coated bullets is that there is no lube bleed during hot storage conditions. That is important to me for pistol ammo and I am weighing using either BBDT or Hi-Tek. I like the proven performance (20 years) of Hi-Tek but BBDT has the advantage of long shelf life of the powder.

Yet, in a way, I do agree with some of what Mr. Humble says. If I want to push rifle bullets fast and get good accuracy with good terminal performance, it is so much easier to do so with the modern jacketed bullet. It may be "fun" to do that with lead bullets - but it surely is not cost effective for the handful of hunting bullets most of us use.

Before anyone piles on. I have over 40,000 cast bullets (and yes some are rifle bullets) in my inventory. Nothing wrong with cast bullets - but there is nothing wrong with J's either.

Don Verna

Don,

I just wanted to give you a BIG THANK YOU for all the grief you put up with on this thread from very the beginning. It has all the information I need to know about coatings.

Dave

[David R]

I have posted this before, by better results this time. A clean barrel and 5 fouling shots, I then put TEN rounds in 2 1/8" at 100 yards. This is all I expect.

Stevens model 250 (savage 110) 308.
Bayou 115 gr 30 carbine bullet.
12 grains Promo. Lp primer. AV1825 fps. Sd 11

I will not have to clean it again for a long time.

I shot some jacketed, then more of the Bayou coated and it took about 10 shots to settle in again.

[MT Gianni]

As a fence sitter on coating it appears that if I get 2" moa with FWFL @ 2400 fps, coating will not give me another 300 fps.

[xacex]

As a fence sitter on coating it appears that if I get 2" moa with FWFL @ 2400 fps, coating will not give me another 300 fps.

No, it wont but you wont have the smoke, and you can pre-coat thousands of boolits and not worry about changes of hardness because you can re-heat treat. No worry about how hot it is outside, and if your lube will migrate into the powder too. Something to think about anyway.

[leadman]

I have been shooting the Hi-Tek for quite a while now and recently loaded some previously made lubed boolits to shoot them up. I had forgotten the amount of smoke they produced and how sticky they were to load.
I did some testing and came to the conclusion that the pressure limits in the Lee manual can be exceeded slightly by using HT coating.
The strength of the alloy has to be hard enough to take the pressure. This is why I used heat treated linotype for my 22 cal. boolits I shot up to 3,619 fps.
I can't get quite the accuracy with the HT coating as I can with the wax based lubed boolits at velocities above 1,800 fps or so. I can get adequate accuracy at hunting load velocities though. I am able to get my 30-06 rifles to group into 1/2 moa to 1 moa with HT at the lower velocities I normally shoot of around 1,600 fps.

I do not use any oven for baking my coatings that is also used for food. This is basic common sense. I have looked at the Australian MSDS for the HT coating and found nothing for concern as long as you have good ventilation (outdoors) and stay out of any smoke that leaves the ovens.

[SkyKid]

I've been reading this thread for a while and would like to try pcing some cast
But with working all the time I don't even have a chance to reload let alone cast
I was thinking about how some feel that the lead cannot be cast hard enough to not fail and that maybe part of the reason why it is tough to get 2 moa
Has anyone tried casting zinc
Not sure if it is doable
But if you used a heavier mold say a 200gr to get 180gr?
Just wondering don't know what the weight difference would be
I would think the zinc would be a lot harder than lead
Maybe get better results or not
Just this dumb frogs 2 cents worth
Heck it might be a way to use up all those zinc wheel weights

[GhostHawk]

Well I've been watching this thread with a lot of interest.

What I really have not seen is a lot of guys saying "Ok, you guys are right, PC is the answer"

I suspect it is going to come down to personal taste and style.
And until you can shoot true MOA (That means more than just 50 or 100 yards) in front of Witness's who can varify load, range, etc.
I suspect you won't see a ton of new converts. I think lots of people are on the fence on this one, and would prefer someone else do the ground work.

[Ronnie Dale]

My take on this thread is this.

Very very few people who are the most dedicated cast bullst aficionados are doing with the OP requests with ANY cast projectile. Lubed or PC

[RP]

My take on this thread is this.

Very very few people who are the most dedicated cast bullst aficionados are doing with the OP requests with ANY cast projectile. Lubed or PC

I was posting a long drawn out rant so to speak saying the same thing but after looking at it sometimes short and simple is a lot better. Lead or alloys have limits coating them I feel will not change that. The goal for coating for me is no leading and great colored bullets that shoot good.