Anyone given up on PC?

[stubshaft]

PC gives me the ability to shoot soft (9 BHN) boolits out of my revolvers with NO leading, NO loss of accuracy and NO greasy lube on the gun.

I have been casting and shooting boolits since the late 60's and have had much success with regularly lubed boolits. But since the advent of PC, my lubed boolits sit in their containers (and probably will until my dependents inherit them).

[rockshooter]

Quote Originally Posted by HABCAN View Post
I would think that those whose PC'd boolits were too big to chamber properly could just run them through an appropriate sizing die and all would be well? Am I missing something here?

Sometimes it makes the nose too fat to chamber- and while this can be sized appropriately it is sometimes easier to switch to a different mold
Loren

[72stick]

I am new to casting. I went straight to powder coat. Now that I'm learning........my few times I have succeeded was due to the powder coating. Even boolits that didn't work.....didn't lead my barrels. I have powder coating down pat. I put the boolits in a vibratory tumbler, sift, and throw on a pan with parchment paper. I make 2 more pans while 2 are cooking....and I can coat 500 in a evening after work with little trouble. I am having all kinds of trouble casting.....and loading. If I don't get this down......I won't be able to continue shooting uspsa. I shot all summer with factory ammo.......and it's killing me. I have access to as much wheel weight lead as I can grab......I sell tires......so I can grab lead before someone offers money for our wheel weight buckets! I suppose I have close to 800 lbs right now. I need to get casting perfected. I am going to get it soon.

They haven't made pure lead wheel weights in a long, long time. The wheel weights in use today have too much zinc in them to cast well.

[cgm]

Yes. I gave it up. I shoot low velocity pistol target loads only. So... no discernible benefits. For my purposes, it was more work than what it was worth.

[Budzilla 19]

Please include me in the category of staying with pc forever! Easy, works for me. Just my .02.

[Bloodman14]

I may be leaving PC for a couple of reasons; I have suddenly run into problems getting PC to stick to the boolits, and I don't know why. Fresh PC, fresh aluminum foil, I have a good ground (spark test), fresh cast boolits, etc. The PC sticks to the foil, but, I can see it fall off the sides of the boolits. I have several thousand boolits ready to go in all of my calibers, so I don't need any more, anyway. Because my guns are all milsurps, I actually prefer to have a thin coating of grease/lube in the bore and on the surface of the action, because it becomes a rust preventative. I will try to start from scratch on the PC method sometime in the future.

[MyFlatline]

Please include me in the category of staying with pc forever! Easy, works for me. Just my .02.

I would try cleaning the bullets in, Acetone ,Denatured Alcohol or Lacquer thinner and try again.
But hey, PC is not for everyone..

[Stilly]

Has worked for me 110% for over 3+ years! BBDT and ESPC both work perfectly. No grease. No grease smoke. No stinky boolits in the summer. No leading........EVER....after thousands of rounds from 223 to 45 cal.

Yes there is a velocity ceiling but some on here are going to the upper limits with no leading or degradation of performance. I limit my PC to around ~2K fps. For full house rifle loads I use standard commercial FMJ's - mainly 223/5.56.

Banger

I gotta agree and that is SOLID. If you intend to push PC over 2500 FPS in MY book, then move to J-words. I will cast a lot of x39 for the AK because most of my AK rounds I expect to go around 2200 FPS or slower.

I just have issues with the gas checks. My lee sizer is not playing very nicely. Maybe it is the angle that the spartan sits at though. When I put my JRC back on the bench I will know more then.

[Motor]

Stilly. Have you tried simply not using the gas checks? Going against popular belief I get excellent accuracy with my pistol bullets that are designed for gas checks shooting them without gas checks.

I use shake and bake so my entire bullet is coated. I also get decent accuracy with my sub-sonic cast loads using the Lee 160gr 2R TL without the gas checks. I simply haven't had time to try them super sonic without them.

I have shot the Lee 55gr cast bullets without gas checks with loads that cycle a standard AR-15 (I'm guessing around 2000fps maybe a little more) and have absolutely no issues with the powder coated bullets other than they are simply not accurate because on this bullet the gas check makes up over half of the bearing surface.

I'm thinking about trying the 160s un-checked in the 300 BO with normal super sonic loads.

Motor

[HCH]

I haven't found a good reason to go back to lubed!!

[Retumbo]

[dahermit]

They haven't made pure lead wheel weights in a long, long time. The wheel weights in use today have too much zinc in them to cast well.

To the best of my knowedge, they have not ever made clip-on pure lead wheel weights. They have always been a mixture of Lead, tin, and Anitmony. As for too much zinc in wheel weights, if they ever used an alloy of zinc and lead, that is is news to me. As I understand it, new wheel weights are now pure zinc, not an alloy. If someone knows differently, please report it here.

[iMigraine]

Started with powder coating after hearing about it and reading posts on this super helpful forum. I PC all my pistol boolits with no issues using the shake & bake method (stopped using plastic BB's since they don't seem to help induce an electrostatic charge). Just starting to test PC boolits for 30/30. Using gas checked PC boolits first with a chronograph, so I can then use plain base PC boolits safely. When I get time to experiment I'll post my results.

Oh, big tip to those who are new to powdercoating. Harbor Freight red "works" but buy better powdercoating powder from either Smokes (forum member) or Prismatic Powders online. High Gloss powders seems to coat really well too. I've used Playboy Blue and Ink Black powders with great success.

[Pumpkinheaver]

I have pretty much gone to PC for all of my cast bullets. I see no reason not to.

[bobby]

pc is the way to go, I have the best luck with smokes powder

[Dave W.]

My son-in-law tried PCing some and had good luck, the problem was it was very slow to do any volume. He shoots several thousand pistol and revolver rounds a year. I never tried after hearing what he had to say. I use a star sizer so it does not take long to crank out a thousand or two. For us leading is not a problem. We shoot at an outdoor range so smoke is not a problem.

My hat is off to those of you that that are doing it. They shor look purdy.

[MyFlatline]

Dave W. , an added bonus to PC is the lube does not melt or get hard over time, does not gum up the dies either. I can coat 25 pounds of 255 grain 45's in an hour with my set up. Don't know how slow that is compared to yours.

[#40Fan]

I just started this process and I can't see why anyone would not want to use it. It is stupid easy. Out of the 1000 sticky posts on this forum, is there one deals with the draw backs to powder coating?

[dverna]

Dave W. , an added bonus to PC is the lube does not melt or get hard over time, does not gum up the dies either. I can coat 25 pounds of 255 grain 45's in an hour with my set up. Don't know how slow that is compared to yours.

A Star will lube and size about 1000 bullets an hour. You may be able to PC that many, and that is great if you do not need to size. But a Star is not the best solution for everyone. It is the best for high volume shooters.

[MyFlatline]

Thanks Don, I know nothing about a star..

I am one of the anal one's tho, I size before and after coating, that is just me. I don't shoot competition so speed is not all that important.