Thinking of trying this

[gpidaho]

abunaitoo: It's somewhat important that your oven is the convection style so you get even heat around the Boolits. A toaster style oven will have hot and cold spots and can cause you grief. Be careful not to over heat the bullets before you add them to the powder or you will get a very thick coating and this can add to bullets that aren't balanced and too large to chamber for some rifle rounds. Please don't take these comments to be negative, just trying to help you get a good start. It really is a great process. Gp

[ThomR]

I'd like to echo what gpidaho said about not getting your boolits too hot before you dump them in the powder. I made that mistake when I was first starting out with powder coat. Not only was it a waste of powder coat, but my time casting the boolits was wasted too. I normally do 150 for around ten minutes. I will either dump them in the powder right away, or wait a few minutes and let them cool off a little before I dump them. It doesn't seem to make too much of a difference.

[Smoke4320]

heating them first (warm not hot ) does assure there is no moisture on/in the lead and could make coating a lot easier .. Now getting the bullets HOT will cause you great problems as the coating will start to melt immediately plus cause clumping may too much powder buildup ect .. NOT a situation you want to be in at all

[Dragonheart]

Actually, over heating make some nice cannon balls, not exactly round, but well glued together.

If you preheat, keep the temp below 150 F degrees and you shouldn't have a problem, but you do need an accurate thermometer to monitor the process. I ditto the convection oven suggestion.

[slim1836]

AND PLEASE DON'T USE THE SAME OVEN FOR FOOD.
Get a dedicated oven for lead only.
Slim

[abunaitoo]

What about wet coating?????
Boolets need to be cleaned first, so would adding a little powder while their still damp, help coat them evenly???

[ThomR]

What about wet coating?????
Boolets need to be cleaned first, so would adding a little powder while their still damp, help coat them evenly???

No. the powder will not stick at all.

[David2011]

Just two days ago we had an unusually cool and humid day in New Mexico. I grew up on the Gulf Coast so I understand high humidity. I used Smoke”s powder and black bbs, shaken in a #5 tub and baked for 20 minutes in a garage sale $20 convection oven, pretty much the standard procedure. I had no adhesion issues. The coating was a LITTLE thinner than on drier days but plenty to lube the boolits. None came off when sizing and they slid through the Star lube sizer with much less resistance than bare lead. Most of the batch was used at yesterday’s cowboy action shoot with total success on the part of the ammo. The shooter was less successful but I had fun.

I read for many months, maybe 2 years before my first PC job. I used Smoke’s from the outset and have never regretted that decision.

[abunaitoo]

Here's how I'm going to try it.
1) seat gas check and size through my Lee sizer.
2) rinse with acetone and let dry on a clean paper towel
3) hand tumble in a cleaned butter tub. With plastic bb's. Don't like cool whip.
4) parchment paper on a pan. Never heard of non-stick foil.
5) bake for 15min
Questions..........
Instead of picking them out one by one. can I shift them with a screen????
Rifle boolets hard to stand up. How bad is it when they lay down?????
I don't have a convection toaster oven. I'll keep searching for a cheap one.
Should I bake it for a minute or two longer?????
I have an over thermometer, I'll make sure it's at 400F before baking.

[asmith80]

Questions..........
Instead of picking them out one by one. can I shift them with a screen????
Rifle boolets hard to stand up. How bad is it when they lay down?????
I don't have a convection toaster oven. I'll keep searching for a cheap one.
Should I bake it for a minute or two longer?????
I have an over thermometer, I'll make sure it's at 400F before baking.

1) I use a mesh tray for silverware that I got from Amazon to sift the excess powder out, only takes a couple shakes. Doesn't affect the quality of the finished product and I get a good, uniform coat

2) laying down is not bad. You might get a flat spot on the boolit from where it was laying, but it should still function perfectly fine

3) a couple minutes baking either way probably won't matter that much. If you like the peace of mind, go a couple minutes longer, if you're in a hurry a couple minutes short won't really do much either

[abunaitoo]

Powder should be here this week.
Got everything gathered up except for the convection oven.
I'll try with the one I have, and see what happens.

[abunaitoo]

Powder not here yet, but should be soon.
Question...........
How long after coating should I wait before resizing and loading?????

[gpidaho]

'till they don't burn your fingers. Gp

[abunaitoo]

Powder came today.
Looks great. Really bright.
I hope I have time to try it tomorrow.

I've seen some dump the hot coated boolets in water.
Is that a good idea????

[ThomR]

Powder came today.
Looks great. Really bright.
I hope I have time to try it tomorrow.

I've seen some dump the hot coated boolets in water.
Is that a good idea????

You can drop them straight into water if you want. I dump my bullets into a 5 gallon bucket and immediately start shaking the bucket around. While I'm shaking them around I'll dump in like half a bottle of water and continue to shake them around. I've found that my bullets stick together much much less than when I was dropping them into water.

[abunaitoo]

So I tried it today.
Went about the way I thought it would.
Sized and seated gas check with a cleaned Lee sizer.
Washed them with Denatured Alcohol.
Proper container, white pellets, 1/2 teaspoon of powder.
Shake, shake, shake.
Sift with a screen bowl
Stand up on pan (frustration)
Bake at 400 for 15 minutes (?)
First the mistakes............
1) Don't heat the boolets to much before coating.
I got them a little to hat and the powder got them stuck together.
2) Don't use tin foil under the boolets.
Old dirty pans, so I lined with tin foil. Bottom of boolets stuck and had to scrap foil off the bottoms.
3) Get a timer that will not die.
Timer died, Beep didn't go off.
Need to get
1) Non stick pan
2) New timer
3) Big bucket that fits pan for water cooling
4) Mittens
Towels get hot.
What worked
1) Powder did harden and was nice
2) My non-convection oven worked fine.
3) Water drop worked fine
4) My white pellets seem to work fine
What needs work
1) Coating not even
I thought they looked well coated after tumbling, but had some bare spots.
Not from contamination, but uneven coating.
2) Need to find a way to make it easier to stand up boolets
They kept on falling over as I lifted the pan.
These were LEE 20gr .309 GC, so short.
I'm sure taller boolets will not stand at attention
Worked about as well as I thought it would.
First time, so need to learn/experiment more
Going to load, and shoot them as is.

[abunaitoo]

Shot them yesterday.
Works good.
About the same as lubed boolets.
I will try coating another batch.

[owejia]

Only been powder coating since last year, had everything to do it for about 3 years, was just overthinking everything. Will never use lube again as long as powder coating is available to me. Have cast thousands of bullets and have powder coated most of them, still have about 6,000 to finish. Love the long term storage benefit of powder coating. Will cast a few thousand more this fall and winter because at 72 may not be many years before unable to cast so will have a large stockpile to shoot from even if too old to cast and my granddaughter will have a large supply of free bullets to shoot. Love Smokes pc, works great.

[Dragonheart]

Only been powder coating since last year, had everything to do it for about 3 years, was just overthinking everything. Will never use lube again as long as powder coating is available to me. Have cast thousands of bullets and have powder coated most of them, still have about 6,000 to finish. Love the long term storage benefit of powder coating. Will cast a few thousand more this fall and winter because at 72 may not be many years before unable to cast so will have a large stockpile to shoot from even if too old to cast and my granddaughter will have a large supply of free bullets to shoot. Love Smokes pc, works great.

I agree with your assessment on PC. I cast & coat during the cooler months as here in Texas it is no fun sitting behind a casting furnace when the air temp is 95-100 degrees. Also during the winter the winds come from the north and the humidity drops. At 70, PC has no shelf life that I need to worry about and I don't buy green bananas any more either.

[abunaitoo]

Second batch of baked boolets.
These came out better than the first ones.
Made a screen to keep them standing up. Helped a bunch.
Didn't add anymore powder to the bowl. anted to try a thinner coat.
Came out just as I wanted.
Maybe could have been a little thicker, but I'm happy with it.
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