New casting today

[snowmanwr426]

New here, first post.
Fairly new to casting for cartridge. I have casted round all and abbots for years. This is just my second batch, these are .380 casted on a Lee 356-102-1R mold. I than powder coated them with Eastman PC in a toaster oven set to 400 for 20 minutes, than water quince. Question is this.
I have most that have a small baked spot where the bullets where touching each other during cooking. I'm not real worried about it, but I have seen pictures of others that have 0 bald spots. Are the pics I see with PC with no bald spots, are they separating the casts to where they aren't touching. Or am I doing a step differant.

[Conditor22]

snowman, there are 2 ways to bake ASBBDT PC 1 is your way that works with many PC's but not all where you get stuck together boolits


or stand them up



IF you don't sift all the excess PC off you are more likely to get sticking.

If you dump your freshly PC'd boolits right away you are more likely to get sticking.

Re-read the baking instructions from the manufacturer, they say to bake for XX minutes after XX = (the boolits reach XXX° of the PC starts to flow)

those boolits look really good for your first PC job

[snowmanwr426]

Thanx, I did sift powder real well. I guess I should have mentioned that out of all that isshown, I had about 10 groups of pairs stuck together. Your second picture you have them in rows and columns, I tried that with my second batch, but my fingers were making the PC come off of boolit, so I stopped. Is there a better way to place them flat down, and in rows and columns? That is a nice try you have too.

[jcren]

For standing them, most use big tweezers or nitrile gloved fingers. I use both, and nitrile (cheap hardware store blue kind) gloves works best for me. Just coat the finger tips of the glove with powder and you can even touch up the bullet noses you mess up.

[bedbugbilly]

Little soldiers all lined up in formation ready to move out . . . . .

[44Blam]

With PC, I tumble with airsoft BBs and then pick them out by the nose with very fine tweezers. Sometimes it messes up the nose, but I don't really care as long as the main part of the boolit is good.

With this method, I can bake 120 44s, 175 40s, 220 30 cals, etc at a time. I stand them up and keep 'em separated. Tall boolits are tricky, but I move the oven to the bench and I am REALLY careful.

[cwlongshot]

I got away from standing them all Up unless I need perfect results.

Most of the time I get near perfect from baking lying down in a basket as long as I have a single layer. I see others just dump them and bake them. But I find better results from
The even heating one gets by standing or baking single layer.

Experiment a little.

I use the baskets from bed bath and beyond fro drawer organization.

CW

Edit: BTW. The lil voids or holidays dont hurt a thing preformance wise.

[fredj338]

I stand them up. A jig is the fastest way to do this with large tweezers or forceps.

[snowmanwr426]

Thank you everyone, our bed bath beyond closed down a couple months ago, I like the baskets you all talk about, so I had a buddy in comifornia go get me a few and mail them to me. Got them today, and I'm going to do a basket full tomorrow, .380 for the wife. Going to shake them to get all excess powder off and see how it goes.
Again thank you everyone.

[Bazoo]

Welcome to the forum snowman, glad you're having success. I've yet to give PC a go but I've got most everything and am gearing up for it.