BEst way to PC 223's and 30's......DT

[bangerjim]

After messing around with numerous jigs and rigs racks and ideas on how to efficiently and quickly coat those itsy-bitsy tiny little boolits, I have finalized the best and most efficient method is DT for my proposes.

Using the standard CoolWhip (#5) bowl, put about 1/3 tsp of red powder in on top of a handful of boolits (~50), enough to cover the bottom, and start swirling.... NO LID. Add powder sparingly as they coat up. Those little 223's really coat fast! 30's are just about as fast.

When coated.....GENTLY (!) sift them out onto 1/4" hardware cloth wrapped around your oven racks. Put a piece of paper under to catch the extra powder. Let them gently fall on the wire mesh, keeping them from clumping as much as possible. Nice thing is, you can just put your NS foil right over the top of the hardware cloth to do your other larger boolits! Works perfectly as a sub surface for the foil. You will eventually have to put new cloth on, but the roll I bought at Lowe's will make a lifetime supply of rack covers!!!!!!



You are now ready to bake. I have been able to get at least 150+ 223's on a rack at a time. 10 min and 400F later, you have nicely coated boolits...even the bottoms and GC areas.

To remove easily, put the full rack (boolits down) over a cake pan with a towel on the bottom and, using a small flat ended-dowel, gently push the still hot boolits off the mesh.

This method eliminates all the washers, nuts, wires, O-rings, and other methods I have tried to hold these little dudes. The coating is ~90% as good as ESPC. Since they are so light, they do not knock off the powder from collisions with the surrounding boolits as larger cal's do.

Simple, fast, and efficient. I coated the red ones last night in only 2 bakes. There are about 400ea) 223 Bators in that picture.
Attachment 101031

If you want to use GC's you can tap them on with a hammer after PC and seat them in your press. I feel that PC'ing over a GC is not necessary. If they do not fit with friction, you have something undersized on your boolit or oversized on your check. All the ones I just did are for 22LR replacements and will be loaded for around 1000fps and without GC's

The yield is around 95%.....those that have lead showing thru on the TOPS of the grease grooves (ONLY)....... I just coat them again!

Just another idea how to easily & quickly coat those pesky very tiny boolits we all love and enjoy shooting without spending lots of time and effort building jigs and racks and rigs.

bangerjim

[bangerjim]

119 views and no comments???????????????????

Let me hear your comments/ideas!

bangerjim

[Nikolaus]

I'm going to coat some .223 75gr here shortly. Maybe I will give it a shot! I already have everything needed to dt with HF red.

[pretzelxx]

I plan on the exact same method this weekend if the wife doesn't plan the days for me

[Nikolaus]

I don't have any hardware cloth. What would the result be putting them on non stick?

Picked up some cloth. Good write up! I will try this tonight.

[Nikolaus]

I did 120 with this method tonight. Did have to cull a few for gas check area having too thick of PC buildup and or the mesh left exposed lead at the bands. That being said it did deliver a lot of boolits quick and easy. In your write up you said you did 2 bakes. Is that 2 coats and bakes as that is how i understood it. I did a ten minute first coat, re tumbled, then a 30 minute and water quench for hardness. Will see how these shoot as they are my first .223's and first gas checks. 75 grain .226. Does the mesh strip less as PC builds up on it?

[bangerjim]

That was ONE coat and ONE bake..........2X..............for a total of 400 (2x200)boolits. I NEVER do more than one coat. If it takes more than one, I use a different process! 2 coats is a total waste of time an energy.

Once the PC gets REALLY thick on the mesh...........replace it. I have done around 1000 boolits on the 1st piece of mesh and you can see from the picture the amount of built-up. I will probably replace it after a couple more. Very simple to do! And I have a TON of it.

bnagerjim

[Nikolaus]

I will try again with 1 coat. They get pretty thick with 2!

[jameslovesjammie]

bangerjim,

Using that hardware cloth method, do you have any voids in your finished coating? I tried using Reynolds non-stick foil and dumped the bullets on and got voids in the finish where the PC contacted the foil.

[bangerjim]

Life is not perfect and neither is this method. You will find some divots in a few boolits, but I have had pretty good luck with this. I would say I get ~90% success rate. But is definitely better than dumping them on a flat foil surface.

But try it for yourself. You be the judge of what gives you the best acceptable results. At the rate some shoot 223's putting them in holders and such is just too time consuming and this method allow you to crank out a bunch pretty fast.

Also if you knock them off while the are still hot, that allows the divots to sort of heal over.

Try it. A small roll of hardware cloth runs about $5.......nothing in the scheme of things.

Let us know your results!

banger

[jameslovesjammie]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I've been standing everything on their base on non-stick foil since my first experiments didn't turn out so well. It's just so time consuming that it becomes tedious to stand them all up.

I think I'll give the hardware cloth a try in a few days.

Thanks again!

James

[brstevns]

How does this work with 30 cal. ?

[bangerjim]

How does this work with 30 cal. ?

Never have tried cloth with the 30's. I always have used fender washers under NS foil and ESPC them black. The GC area fits snugly in the washer's hole (if you select the right one!) and holds them in place perfectly. I get about 60 of them per tray. Got the washers at Lowe's and Home Despot. The sure fall over otherwise!!!!!!!

You probably could use DT with 30's as I described above. May have to try it this week! Let us know if you do!

Have fun!

banger

[Garyshome]

Well done!

[nighthunter]

For me DT is my best option for PCing my bullets. I've DT'ed 22 caliber to big 45 caliber for 45/70. They all come out with a nice glossy appearance and feed through my sizing dies with just a little bit of lanolin dissolved in rubbing alchohol and sprayed on the bullets and give enough time for the alchohol to evaporate. It's a nice easy to use lube.

[psychicrhino]

Well, after reading a large number of threads regarding powder coating, equipment, standing boolits and so forth. This seems like it would be right up my ally. Some power, hardware cloth, toaster oven seems much more doable. Thanks for the write up BangerJim and the invite to the thread. I am new to casting / loading and only have a thousand or so rounds under my belt. I had no plans buy more equipment than the Lee pushthrough sizers to use with the LLA. I learned pretty quick that poking some LLA coated rounds in my pocket was a good way to clean out all the lint I believe I will have to swing by the local harbor freight tomorrow and try this with some 113gr 30 cal boolits I have cast.

[bangerjim]

Well, after reading a large number of threads regarding powder coating, equipment, standing boolits and so forth. This seems like it would be right up my ally. Some power, hardware cloth, toaster oven seems much more doable. Thanks for the write up BangerJim and the invite to the thread. I am new to casting / loading and only have a thousand or so rounds under my belt. I had no plans buy more equipment than the Lee pushthrough sizers to use with the LLA. I learned pretty quick that poking some LLA coated rounds in my pocket was a good way to clean out all the lint I believe I will have to swing by the local harbor freight tomorrow and try this with some 113gr 30 cal boolits I have cast.

Welcome to the "Sane" ward side of the group!!!!!!!!

Sounds like you have done some reading and are going to try DT. Look for the red powder...works the best. Grab your coolwhip bowl and start swirling!

Let us know how your 1st venture come out.

Good luck!

banger

[psychicrhino]

Well, after work today I drove out to the Harbor Freight. First thing on my list was one of their double rock tumblers that was on sale ($90 on sale for $45 minus coupon = $36). I have been reading about using them for small brass batches, making a hammer mill with them for black powder, and maybe even tumble some rocks. Anyway, finally found the powder coating stuff - looked to have about twenty pounds of it on the shelf. I picked up a pound of red and a pound of yellow. I have read quite a few threads on another forum about using it for fishing jigs - of which I have a new mold for as well. Still trying to source an oven....and I am pretty sure all of the boolits I have cast right now are LLA coated already. So, I need to cast some boolits. Without a toaster oven I was thinking about a way I could maybe put a rack inside the dutch oven on the coleman stove and poke my lead thermometer under the lid for temp control? Just thinking out loud. How critical is the temp and timing?

Also read a good bit about the HiTek coating (the 107 page thread is only a little intimidating. Looks like interesting stuff. Will post some pics when I have some results.

[brstevns]

Some things I learned from my frist attemps. HF Red does coat the best of the HF powders. I never did get that pretty high gloss red look. Had to coat twice even with it. The yellow worked but took 3 coats.
This was with bullets cast over a year ago. Tried warming the bullets and for me the results was the same, the red did do better . Frist mistake. don't dump your warm bullets into the powder if they are too warm to touch. You will get a baseball size pile of bullets glued together by the paint. OOPS!
Tried some Powderbuythepound colors. Worked great on the frist try even with the old cast bullets I had. Found I could mix the HF powder in with the PbP pwder and they also worked out great.
I was placing them base down on non-stick foil. This was for some 357 cal and 44 cal bullets. Cheapest toaster oven Wally-World carries worked great. 20 minutes at 400 degrees.
Mistake number 2, should have measured the 357 cal bullets before coating. they were running .361 and I needed .357. Were hard to size and a few needed to be coated again. Sizing these first then coating worked out just find. came out .3585 Plan on using these at that measurement.
My best suggestion would be, if trying this the frist time like me. Get a little Powderbuythepound powder to mix in with the HF powder. Will makes things a lot easier and give you great looking bullets on your frist try.

[xacex]

H/F red does not work for me for some reason. Different batch out here, old, shoot I don't know. Tried another color I bought online (ebay), and BAM, coated boolits in about 5 swirls. This works well! So far I have not tried the hardware cloth, just putting them on non stick. Did some NOE 311247 boolits for the blackout expecting them to not chamber, but was pleasantly surprised. Only one out of three didn't eat the test cartridges up. But, it only has a few hundred rounds through it, and is not broke in yet.