Powder coating works fine for small batches. The oven I have is a $40 convection unit from walmart. My aluminum sheets (with non stick foil) are about the size of a sheet of paper. I try to at least fill a tray to make it worth the power used to run the oven for 20 minutes. For large batches I fill a second tray while the first cooks. Others use a tray made of screen and do larger batches, but I didn't have luck with baking with boolits laying on their sides.
This 9mm mold drops fat, so I had to size after casting, then washed the case lube off with dish soap and powder coated and then sized again. I ended up sizing to 358 then 356 in two steps, then again through the 356 after powder.
Normally, I cast, powdercoat, lube and size and then load them up. PC adds a few thousandths and sizing PC smooths out the sides and makes it the correct diameter again. PC on my rifle boolits made the nose bigger and I would have had to seat them deeper. After shooting those few, I have not tried it again.
There is a ton of info on this forum in the coatings section. It is worth trying out.
Speaking of smoking boolit lube, I have a little story on that topic. I competed in a dueling tree match. After 500+ rounds of ammo and winning all of the heats except for one, I found myself battling it out with one other guy. Earlier, that guy took my first wrist band and knocked me into the loser group. After beating all the losers, I was up against him again. The sun was shinning in our eyes during the late afternoon and the dueling trees were in the shadow of the hills. We went at it again, but by that point my gun was caked in bullet lube and there was so much smoke that neither of us could see the plates. We were both shooting blindly, at some points, in hope of hitting them to take the win for the entire match. Well, he beat me. He turned to me and said, "talk about smoke and hope!" His name is Mike Dalton and he started the Steel Challenge shooting competition that is quite famous.
I do use a gas check on some of my 45 cal boolits that are PC, as I use them in the 460 magnum. For that, an upsidedown single stage press works well.
I started to figure out how to make a single stage like the green machine above. Surprisingly, I ran across his build thread on that machine. The body of his is great and I ended up being right about how he made it, though most people wouldn't use the same method. My version will not use that method either. The linkage is simple and is just a reversal of a lee press, so that is likely what I will try. I could post more in this thread or maybe it would be better to start a new thread, when I get started. It will be a fun challenge and if it turns out good, I would consider selling them.
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Originally Posted by MT Chambers
I didn't take it that way.
