Simple, obvious trick to reduce flashing

[retrobass]

I've been using Smoke's clear with the dry tumble method to coat my 9mm boolits. Yesterday I did 900 (in batches of 100), and I realized something that seems like it should have been obvious from the start. I always wipe the boolit base, and set them on parchment paper with ammo trays. I end up having to change paper fairly often or I'll get paint caked on the bases. Well, Eureka! Now before I put the tray in the oven, I blow the tray off. I make sure not to breath back in as I do this. This completely removes spilled powder between the boolits. Furthermore, if a coating of paint is extra thick, I can simply blow the rack of boolits a few extra seconds and thin the coating out to whatever looks correct. This epiphany may be something everybody else has already figured out, but if not give it a try. No need for PID's attached to fans or regulated compressors, just use them lungs!

[Spector]

That's what I started doing last year with smokes clear and it seems to work well in getting excess powder off the boolits. I tried a shop vac from a distance and the discharge side seemed to work well......until I got it too close.

Mike

[Grmps]

When I use tweezers to stand them up I tap the tweezers on the edge of the bowl and knock off all the excess powder.

I no longer use tweezers, I dump them in a colander, sift and shake off the BB's and excess powder then dump them in a baking basket.

You will be surprised how few stick together and those easily come apart with a lite twist and minor scaring--- perfectly good to shoot.

Using this method I can coat and bake over 1,000 boolits in less than 1 hour. (3 batches of 350 baked @ 400 for 15 min.)
Some people dump the tray straight from the oven into a bucket of water (some do tray/basket and all) I allow them to cool a couple minutes, dump the tray/basket on a towl ( a couple light taps with a leather mallet releases all the boolits) the few that are stuck together I seperate with gloves or a light tap with the leather mallet.

[retrobass]

My OCD just won't let me bake a clump. My boolits will group under 2" all day long at 25 yards, and clear 8" plates at 50 yards every shot. I can't help but think the basket method wouldn't yield this level of accuracy. Maybe I should take the plunge and do an objective test.

I use my booger hooks with nitrile gloves. Tweezer method would drive me nuts for sure.

[Grmps]

You could use a colander to sift and shake off the BB's and excess powder then use your booger hooks with nitrile gloves.
This would give you a thin even coat.
You will be surprised at the quality of finish you can get with the dump in basket method with the right powder. (some powders work better than others. This is a good basket to use

[Crash_Corrigan]

The above basket looks just like the four I bought at Bed Bath and Beyond for $5 apiece. It works great but I am going to have to try the dump method of PCing. It is just so tiresome to stand up each boolit when I am doing 400 plus on a tray.

The last time I posted that I had installed my2ndright.com upgrades on my RCBS Pro Melter. Since then I have cast about 2,000 boolits with it. I am convinced that this is a worthwhile investment. I had recently bought a Mihec 8 banger mold designed to make a 130 gr 357 dia mold without lube grooves to make powder coated boolits. Wow what a great mold! Once I got it heated up enuf it rained those little boolits at an insane rate.

When I had made about 500 or so I took into my kitchen and powder coated about half of them. The came out looking neat and clean in a coating of Smokem's Bacon Grease. Kinda looks like a rich cream color but much too fat for 9MM's. They will require sizing.

I put away the PC'ing stuff and went back to cast for a few days. With a Lee 6 banger I cast about 600 230 GR Round Nosed .452 boolits and then turned to the NOE Mold which produced 255 GR Keith style WFN boolits. Yesterday I spend the whole day powder coating all those cast boolits. When I got done I realized that all of them were needing resizing as they came out anywhere from .4525 up to .462 in diameter. I do not have any weapons that utilize a .462 boolit. I also cast 172 boolits in a RCBS two cavity mold that produced a 98 gr boolit in .312 dia of the SWC style. These also came out fat and will require sizing as well.

So today the effort will be to mount my Star Lubrasizer onto my inlinefabrication plate so I can utilize it on my ultramount and size those boolits down to a useful diameter. I do not expect to hook up the air pressure system to lube these as they require no lube. I just wonder if all the work of powder coating and then having to resize these boolits is any easier then just sizing and lubing them in one shot? I can expect less smoking when firing these rounds off but is that worth all the trouble?

Well if not then I really am not out a lot of money since I did not have over $75 invested in the powdercoating adventure. However I did learn something along the way. Maybe the lack of smoke and the lessening of the necessity for cleaning my reloading dies (every couple of hundred rounds) and the cool look of colored boolits will make up for the extra steps in the P/C process. Anyhow my wife declared that she wants her boolits in RED once she saw some of my experimental boolits.

I started out with Harbour Freight's dark red PC and then added some of their Yellow to the mix and obtained a reddish/orange boolit which is pleasing to the eye but still required sizing. I still have Traffic Orange and Yellow along with John Deere Green to play with............

[Stilly]

That's what I started doing last year with smokes clear and it seems to work well in getting excess powder off the boolits. I tried a shop vac from a distance and the discharge side seemed to work well......until I got it too close.

Mike

Oh I hear you there. I made that mistake and the wife wanted to know why our dog had blue streaks on her side after running out of the garage one day. :\

Now I just use the silicone mat and any extra flashing comes off with the sizing of the pill.