Done with the shake and bake method

[hickfu]

OK, I tried again today with the S&B on some 45acp bullets and with the ASBB's it was sucking big time so I took them out. I them put 1.5 teaspoons of blue powder in a cool whip container and heated 75 45acp bullets to 140 degrees for 4 to 5 minutes, dumped them in and shook and spun for about a minute. Here are the bullets.....



Here are some pics of what I used to get S&B PCing in Ojai Ca. where it is not so humid..




Do the ASBB's go bad over time? Mine are still from 2011 or 2012 whenever I started with powder coating.

[Dragonheart]

OK, I tried again today with the S&B on some 45acp bullets and with the ASBB's it was sucking big time so I took them out. I them put 1.5 teaspoons of blue powder in a cool whip container and heated 75 45acp bullets to 140 degrees for 4 to 5 minutes, dumped them in and shoot and spun for about a minute. Here are the bullets.....



Here are some pics of what I used to get S&B PCing in Ojai Ca. where it is not so humid..




Do the ASBB's go bad over time? Mine are still from 2011 or 2012 whenever I started with powder coating.

If in doubt the BB's can be washed, but I think the real answer is you are fighting a moisture problem. The problem could be with moisture in your powder or in the air, but the preheat appears to be overcoming it. It looks like the coating is adequate other than a lot of bare spots or it is just the photo lighting. Bare spots typically occur when the substrate is contaminated, the surface touches something like the dump method instead if standing bullets on their base. At any rate I would say you are close.

[hickfu]

They are coated pretty good, its the lighting making them appear in coated. I keep the powder double zip lock bagged and its perfectly dry. Its humid here and I may have touched the bullets with my hands so from now on I will wear gloves when inspecting them.

[Bad Ass Wallace]

It is very interesting, I returned some rejects to the lead pot yesterday and noted that the coated boolits did not fully melt in the pot of lead until I fluxed and set fire to the flux. I can only conclude that it's flame point is a little above the melting point of lead.

Given this, a plain based cast boolit should well without a gas check.

[cstrickland]

I want bullets that look like this!!! you cant get this with shake and bake

Attachment 268289

That is exactly why I ESPC bullets . I like the super clean smooth look of it . Does it benifit in my pistol ?? I wouldn’t have to say hell no, but the smoothness does allow me some lead way in COAL on some certain bullet profiles
I have tried many times and different processes of the shake and bake , and I have never come close to the even coverage that I get form the ESPC. Some get a little closer than I have , but I have seen none that get that level of smoothness ! Again it doesn’t effect pistol or my rifle . I get 1-1/2 -2 MOA with my 300 blk with shake and bake , and that is more than GTG for 3 gun

[fredj338]

The question is does the waste of powder & time of ESPC worth super clean finish? For me that is no.

[Drm50]

I’m still conventional lube/sizing. Question: it seems a lot of PC is wasted on non bearing boolit surfaces. Is this just done to save time. Seems on some booklist you are using twice the PC that is actually needed. Am I missing something?

[fredj338]

I’m still conventional lube/sizing. Question: it seems a lot of PC is wasted on non bearing boolit surfaces. Is this just done to save time. Seems on some booklist you are using twice the PC that is actually needed. Am I missing something?

For me yes, saves time. Your really couldnt shake & bake just the bearing surface. You could setup a jig of some sort & spray just the bearing surface but why? I can do about 300 9mm bullets with 1tsp of powder shake & bake, pretty economical.

[marek313]

If you take your time shake and bake works just fine. I do stand them all up on the baking tray and give them little extra dusting before they go in but I think they look just fine. Having good quality PC which is stored dry makes more of a difference then the application mode if you ask me.

[BC17A]

Doc, I've been doing almost the same but I use 22lr cases instead. I have several pans that hold 54 boolits for the toaster oven and also larger ones that hold 125 for my high production days using the full-size oven. I use 22's so the PC can coat completely around the base. I coat the boolits with checks the same way which makes them even more secure to the shank. I was doing ES powder-coating long before I started casting so for me it just made sense to spray instead of using the tub method.

[Dragonheart]

They are coated pretty good, its the lighting making them appear in coated. I keep the powder double zip lock bagged and its perfectly dry. Its humid here and I may have touched the bullets with my hands so from now on I will wear gloves when inspecting them.

I store my powder in sealed glass jars in the garage freezer. It appears this extends the life of the powder, for how long I don't know, but I recently cleaned out some Prismatic Powder dating back to 2012 and it sprayed like new.

I try not to handle my bullets with bare hands, but I won't say, I never. The most likely way for bullets to become contaminated is doing a water drop. i learned this early on the hard way, and now I only air cool.

A water drop after coating is not a problem, but I usually do so many bullets at a time I just let the oven cool down and I wouldn't go to any extra effort to increase the hardness on handgun bullets anyway.

[Dragonheart]

I won't argue the point that spraying produces a more even PC, but I do a lot of handgun bullets and prefer shake & bake. I think it just gets down to what you like.

Here for example is in excess of 600 bullets on a single tray and 4 trays go into my Hamilton Beach toaster oven in a single cook. The other tray in the second photo holds over 1000 bullets and 5 trays go into my big oven, all done with shake & bake.

[cstrickland]

I won't argue the point that spraying produces a more even PC, but I do a lot of handgun bullets and prefer shake & bake. I think it just gets down to what you like.

Here for example is in excess of 600 bullets on a single tray and 4 trays go into my Hamilton Beach toaster oven in a single cook. The other tray in the second photo holds over 1000 bullets and 5 trays go into my big oven, all done with shake & bake.

can you tell me what you are shaking those in, and how you are setting them on the tray ?

I use to shake but really like the ESPC I set mine up by hand then spray and into the oven. I do need to leave more space, but have a few trays that hold over 500 each

[cstrickland]

I started doing the shake and bake back when we all started PC'ing our bullets 8 or so years ago but I moved 3 times since so I hadnt even cast in that long. Well now I am in Oregon and it sucks to do the S&B up here with all the humidity so I started looking for my Harbor Freight PC gun I purchased right before I started moving. I also remembered that Popper used a PC gun so I looked at the pics of his bullets from years ago and decided that YUP that is what I am going to now.

So I read through threads that people drilled holes in sheet metal or wood and covered with the "NSF" so today I was bored and went to the dollar store and got some cheap cookie sheets. I went to Harbor Freight and got some Pop Rivets as well. I then laid out a grid pattern on the cookie sheet and used a screw and hammer to punch a divot into the sheet to drill (the rivets are .123 so I picked a drill bit that is .124) I drilled out the holes in the pan as well as the primer pockets of some 9mm cases that were crappy ones that I never use.

I then used the pop rivets to secure the 9mm cases to the pan
Attachment 268266
Attachment 268267

Here are the rivets I got from HF
Attachment 268268
Attachment 268269

So now I can powder coat my 35 Rem GC bullets without getting the GC coated as well.
Attachment 268270

Im going to do the same thing to some 45acp cases to PC my 45-70 GC bullets
Attachment 268271

And some 40 S&W to do 45-70 PB bullets so that a part of the tip is not coated
Attachment 268272

KUDOS to Popper for making the best looking bullets I have seen and finally convincing me to go the HFPC method.

Doc how are you cleaning your pan and brass after coating ? I have long wanted to do something similar for 9mm with a smaller case maybe 25 cal. I shoot lee 356-120TC and thought about making a tray like yours and put my bullets nose down, so there will be a small amount of the tip bare . but it will make it easier to not get shadowing on my bases

[Dragonheart]

can you tell me what you are shaking those in, and how you are setting them on the tray ?

I use to shake but really like the ESPC I set mine up by hand then spray and into the oven. I do need to leave more space, but have a few trays that hold over 500 each

I tumble coat about 6-1/2 pounds of bullets at a time in my homemade vibrator tumbler. The off the shelf tumblers are too aggressive, so I used the the base of a couple of small tumblers, no longer needed. I removed the bowl and replace it with a 5 gallon bucket that is held in place with a 1/4"-20 screw and two all thread side straps affixed to a plywood base. Using the tension on the side straps I can adjust the amount of vibration. The bucket also make it very easy if I choose to preheat.



When done I dump the lot into a plastic dishpan and pick up the bullets using self locking tweezers. They are a lot faster as I can grab and rotate as needed since the bullet is locked in the jaws of the tweezers. Stainless bakers cooling rack, available in different grid sizes, is set on a silicone cooking mat, allowing me to place a maxium number of bullets on a tray by spacing the bullets and holding them upright. Once the loaded tray is on an oven rack I lift the grid up and off. Loading trays is the slowest part of the operation, but I prefer to maintain quality of a bullet cooked on its base.



For small batches 2K and under I use one of my Hamilton Beach Countertop convection ovens.



For larger batches 5K+ I use my converted 30" PID controlled oven:



Once coated I dump the cooled bullets into a commercial plastic food service pan and run them through my homebuilt pneumatic sizer. My steady sizing pace is about 35 bullets a minute.



That's about all there is to it.

[elmacgyver0]

Ahh, a fellow Tinkerdink!

[Dragonheart]

Ahh, a fellow Tinkerdink!

Yeah, but what is an Industrial Engineering major that spent a lifetime in Construction industry supposed to do when he retires?

[Oilcan Harry]

Dragon............... That a really well built numatic sizer, I would like to build one like that too and how does that yellow feeder tube work..?? I think it's a very solid design and I just love the sound of an air cylinder working...

[Conditor22]

You slide a boolit down that yellow feeder tube when the ram in down, when the ram goes up the boolit drops into the sizing die so next time the ram comes down it sizes that boolit and you drop another boolit down the tub.

the tube keeps your fingers away from the hydraulic ram

some people have a tray they dump boolits in at the top of the tube and slide boolits into the tub as needed.

th4e feeder tube is also used with upside down presses

[Dragonheart]

Dragon............... That a really well built numatic sizer, I would like to build one like that too and how does that yellow feeder tube work..?? I think it's a very solid design and I just love the sound of an air cylinder working...

It bullet feeder is actually a simple design. The first one I was when I built "Ram Chucker"a reversed a RCBS Rock Chucker press with a 2-1/2" cylinder to operate the press. I posted a video a number of years ago, some may remember back then, but when Google took over YouTube all the old videos got deleted and I just never got around to re-post.

At first I fed the bullets in by hand, but soon realized that was an accident waiting that had already found a place to happen, so I needed a feeder to keep the hands out of the way of the ram and hopefully speed up the operation. I had built "Ram Buster" a pneumatic multi-tube case feeder to Bulge Bust (take out the bulge that occurs near the case rim where the sizing die doesn't reach) 9mm & 45ACP cases, but this was more complicated and I didn't have the time to spend at that time building one for bullets.

I had noticed that a bullet coming out of a tube set just right would drop into the push through sizing die, ready to be pushed through. So my first feeder was simply supporting the tube, I used an angle welding magnet with a short section of pvc pipe glued to the magnet for support. This idea worked, but it was problematic as the bullet didn't always flip just right and some bullet designs worked better than others. Then I found if I set the bullet end of the tube directly against a longer push rod with the rod was in the down position, the rod itself acted as a stop for the bullet and the operation worked every time.

Ram Chucker worked great but, I soon realized for a simple up & down operation just a supported pneumatic cylinder would suffice, so I built "Ram Sizer" the one in the photo using a more powerful 3-1/2", 4" stroke cylinder One of the problems with my permanent magnet feeder was my bumping and knocking it out of place. So for Ram Sizer and I wanted a better solution, but still wasn't ready to build a more complicated feeder. I tried electromagnets, which most definitely did work, but they needed constant power. I finally decided on a switchable magnet as I already had this yellow welding magnet I had purchased from Amazon, "Strong Hand Tools, Heavy Duty, Adjust-O Magnet Square, On/Off Switches, Pull Force: 65 lbs". The magnet attaches to the steel base plate in any position with a flip of the switch. Attached to the 45 degree side of the magnet and held in place by the magnet'












































































s pull is a lipped metal plate welded to a short section of square tubing. The die end is cut at a 45 degree angle and the top feeder end is cut so it creates a small trough. The magnet holds firm, and it can be removed when I want to use it for its intended purpose.

The speed of the operation is determined by your dexterity as to how fast you can pick up and drop bullets in a tube while the other hand operates the sizer. I use a 3 position toggle type pneumatic switch as you can see; flip to one side the ram goes down, flip to the other side the ram goes up, center position is neutral. Even with my old arthritic hands I can hold a steady pace of sizing 35 bullets a minute for several minutes. I haven't tried to improve on this as it already is capable of sizing more bullets than I need. If you are going to build one I will be happy to provide any information you wish.