First Powder coated Bullets Today

[GBertolet]

I tried coating some bullets today for the first time. I had Traffic Purple coloring. The coating increased my diameter .0025, making the bullets .4555 diameter. I coated the Lyman 452374 bullet. I ran them through a Star .452 sizer die with no ill effects, the coating stayed solid. Very pleased. I am anxious to try them out to see if they lead, and if the smoke would be gone. I found it quite tedious standing the bullets up on their bases on the tin foil to heat, using the needle nose pliers. Can they just be laid haphazardly on the foil to heat? Could I just use nitrile gloves instead of the pliers?

[sureYnot]

I dry tumble mine in a coffee can and dump then in a tray made from hardware cloth, set on a piece of cardboard. I give the tray a couple shakes to get off the excess powder and spread out the pills a bit. Chuck the tray in the oven and pour the powder off the cardboard back into the coffee can. I've done up to ten pounds this way but find it's easier to do a couple smaller batches.

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[asmith80]

Nitrile gloves work well. For some reason you don't knock off much powder when handling them that way. Try using some empty plastic ammo trays to get them lined up, works pretty well for me

[scotner]

Nitrile gloves work well. For some reason you don't knock off much powder when handling them that way. Try using some empty plastic ammo trays to get them lined up, works pretty well for me

Is there more than one type/grade of nitrile gloves? I tried that and it knocked off the powder like I handled them with wet fingers. These were Harbor Freight gloves but I was using Eastwood powder. And yes, I tried rubbing powder on the fingers of the gloves before handling the boolits.

[asmith80]

Nope, I use the regular nitrile gloves from harbor freight too. The light blue ones. If you handle them too much you can still knock off powder, but for me, just grabbing them by the base long enough to stack them in empty ammo trays removes very little powder. I've used Smokes, Eastwood and Powder by the Pound and they all work the same

[Ed_Shot]

+1 for regular nitrile gloves.

[Dragonheart]

I have tried the gloves, but my old fingers have more trouble picking up the small stuff and trying to pack them in really close so I went to self closing tweezers, available on eBay. Knocking the powder off is not an issue with tweezers even with a fragile spray coating. I also use silicon cooking mats instead of foil as they do not need replacement and the bullets don't slide like on foil or parchment.

PC flows and when you lay or dump the bullets the coating will naturally be heaver on one side of the bullet and the bases not flat. Some dump the bullets into a pile to cook so there will be bare spots when they break apart the bullets or they under-cure the polymer and risk leading, so they can easily break up the pile. But they don't seem to care and that's their choice.

Since my goal has always been to hand-load the most accurate ammunition I can, I am old school. I stand my bullets and cure according to mfg's recommendations; this has worked for me since 2012 when I got back into casting and PC and I see no reason to change what works.

If your PC has properly cured it is not going to lead the barrel. Welcome to PC.

[scotner]

Yeah, this is about where I am on PC applicaton. Even standing them up I often end up with a little bit of flange on the bottom. Probably leaving too much powder on them when i put them on the tray. At least having the extra at the base most of it is trimmed off when it goes through the sizer. When I read asmith's post about picking them up by the base I thought "there's your problem". My fingers are so big that it is almost impossible for me to pick up a boolit by handling it a particular way. Hence the collection of tweezers around my bench. Thanks for the replies.