How to get a perfect finish?

[OS OK]

I know what you mean about 'old-N-jittery'...its funny though, I can walk a tray full of .323's" to the oven and slide them in ok, but with .309" the lil-darlins keep falling over!
This boils down to the fact that I'm going to have to make a spray booth and buy a ESPC rig to get them right!
I'm lazy...like the shake-N-bake too much...

[DerekP Houston]

I can barely slide a try of pistol boolits in without knocking a few over, you guys are pro's handling those tall skinny rifle boolits.

[Rich22]

I can barely slide a try of pistol boolits in without knocking a few over, you guys are pro's handling those tall skinny rifle boolits.

9 mils no problem, 155gr 30 cals whew, its nerve wracking even oving 20 inches from table to oven, 245gr 30 cals forget it,not happening

[meadmkr]

I use a 1/4" aluminum sheet which I find gives the loaded tray a good bit more stability and less likely to dump over .30cal or larger. Haven't cast 22 yet but its in the works!

[Echd]

I use cheap 1/4” fender washers for checked 30s. Gives them much more stability.

[bangerjim]

If you are attempting to do this for commercial benefit......GOOD LUCK! We are all hobby casters and shooters on here. I do maybe 400-500 or so at a time with BBDT and ESPC.

The only method for that HUUUUUUUUUGE quantitiy is HiTech shake and dump. 2x. And the finish is so-so in my book. That is why I do not use HiTech.

My ESPC and BBDT boolits are almost a perfect suface finish but not in the massive quantities you are dreaming about!

Stick with grease lube with professional high-speed high-output casting/sizing equipment. Only way you will EVER reach that HUGE commercial output. And then that will be a full time stretch! Hope you do not have a day job.

good luck on that one............

banger

[bstone5]

With an automated Master Caster the usually run from a mold is 3000 cast bullets.

When powder coating The Esp gun is the method that allows 5000 bullets to be coated in a few hours.

The oven is a commercial convection oven that has three trays and can cook 500 bullets at one cooking.

My operation is not commercial, the bullets are made for my family and a few friends who help with the process.

[Wolftracker]

To get a perfect finish, commercial makers might swage their bullets, reduce, coat, cook then re-swage back up to size. Extra steps, I know, but a near mirror finish. Not necessary to achieve normal close range pistol accuracy. When I go to the trouble to do this I get better than normal (for me) accuracy with the hollow base bullet I make. This is just a guess though.

[popper]

if you look at the federal PC bullets you'll see they do two separate applications [to the top and bottom half]

My 'guess' is they do a hot stamp process then size to remove flash. Reels of 'plastic' tape over the ends, hit with a hot stamp die with controlled heating/cooling. Lots of possible methods but none cheap.

[cris]

5000 9mm PC bullets can be easily made in a couple of hours without any automation and using mainly cheap materials. I know one small, part time casting business in Italy that spent several months studying how to reduce a standard high volume coating process to a one man, almost no budget activity.
He succeeded and his current coating speed is around 4000 9mm bullets per hour, using an old kitchen oven I got for free and modified for about 50€ for his needs.
I have seen him at work and will not share any details, because the method was developed for commercial purposes and took a lot of work to fine tune, but as casters in the USA are not competitors to a European bulletmaker, maybe he might be interested in selling his knowledge.
What I can say is, you won't achieve that volume with a cheap HF EPC gun

[OS OK]

cris...What is the name brand of this mans product?

[cris]

To my kowledge he does not use a brand name right now. He has a web site that is under construction and has no pictures (for almost a year now, I wonder if he will ever finish it) with the name crisbullets, www.crisbullets.com (yes we share the same forename ). There is an email and a contact page, maybe it works.

[Dragonheart]

I tumble or spray several hundred bullets at a time and cook 1000-1200 in a single batch in my toaster over. My newly installed 30'" kitchen oven can accommodate 5 racks so I could cook thousands at a time. The dump method just does not give you good bullets and certainly not bullets with a flat base; critical is accuracy means anything.

The problem as I see it would be speeding up the process of moving the bullets to the baking trays, without damaging the fragile powder coating. If I drop a sprayed bullet while moving it to the cooking tray that bullet doesn't go into the oven because the coating gets damaged. When I preheat and tumble coat the coating adheres better and is less likely to get damaged, but handling every bullet is what slows down the process.

[Phantom30]

With a good mechanical engineer, money, and time you can go from ingot to loaded PC round at 3,000 rounds per hour and nobody touches anything except raw material loading, ingots, casings, primers, powder, and HF powder. Results in loaded boxes ready for shipping. If I were Freedom Munitions I'd be trying to set that up right now. But I am not.