powder coated 9mm bullets today

[hickfu]

Although I said I was done with S&B, pistol bullets are only shot short distances to I will only be ESPCing rifle bullets. Today I was going to powder coat the 120 lbs of 124 gr 9mm bullets I cast in the last week but I just couldn't imagine using my old Cool Whip container to do that...

So, I found a hexagon shaped jelly bean container from Costco


It works perfectly in my hexagon shaped tumbler (with a towel rapped around it)


I put 1.5 big teaspoons of powder with around 300 to 400 bullets, put the lid on the tumbler and let it go for 10 or so minutes.

I have OCD so there is no way I could pour the bullets out into a wire basket to bake and then see all the places that the bullets stuck together so I went to the thrift store and picked up a plastic sieve and bowl to pour the freshly powder coated bullets into.


I then shake up and down a couple times to get the powder to go out the bottom and them pour out onto a cookie sheet covered with Non Stick aluminum foil. Here's where my OCD gets me.... I pick them up with tweezers and place them on their base on another foil covered (smaller cookie sheet, that will fit into my little toaster oven)

While one batch is cooking, I work on placing the PC'd bullets on the next one and run more in the tumbler.
I went through 38lbs of 9mm today with my Blue powder from PBTP,


Tomorrow I think I will try Red.

[gnappi]

I did 600 .40 SWC's today, and want to do the rest of the batch this week. I use your basic process except I shake and I also stand them up on trays like so many rows of soldiers. My oven is a convection 2 level. I run those two levels and by the time I have another tray ready, the last 2 trays are done. About 700-800 and hour. I like it a LOT!

I'll do this whole batch teal blue and the next .30 TC I'll do dark midnight blue so I can tell the 175 grain .40 bullets apart!

[waco]

I have a Thumbler's Tumbler. Neat idea!

[reddog81]

120 lbs???!!! Wow. Do you have an automated setup?

[hickfu]

120 lbs???!!! Wow. Do you have an automated setup?

I wish!!!! I had to do those about 16lbs at a time. It took most a week and a half to do.
40lbs of blue

40lbs of red

25lbs purple (I just mixed the blue and red I had left over in the bowl after dumping)

15lbs of black

I wanted to test and black wont work that way, but it came out fully PC'd but the color didnt cover everything.... but I looked them all over and they are clear coated fully. I kind of like them!!!

[hickfu]

I have a Thumbler's Tumbler. Neat idea!

If you want to use your tumbler, The jar is "Kirkland Jelly Belly 49 flavor 64oz" from Costco but they only have it at certain times of year. My daughter bought it last year around Christmas time. Or Amazon sells them for around 26.00 and you have 64oz of jelly beans to eat

[Conditor22]

I tried doc's method with a large #2 jar my ASBB's came in. PC'd 40# of 311-247 boolits in one day, the coating was easy standing all those buggers up with tweezers -- not so much

[Lloyd Smale]

i repurposed a frankfort arsonal cheap vibrating brass cleaner. It will easily do 10 lbs of bullets at a time dump the bullets in dump some powder in start it and walk away for 15 minute. Dump them into a media seperator to get ride of the excess paint and dump them on a cookie sheet with parchment paper and bake. While there baking dump 10 more lbs of bullets and the shook off paint and a little more and on and on and on. Dont know how many lbs of bullets have gone through that tumbler but its in the thousands. When i started doing it i used the plastic bbs, then tried #4 buck but found it works just as good that way using nothing. I get perfect coverage and it frees me up to do other things while the machines are doing the work.

[pacomdiver]

i do it the same way as lloyd does but use a harbor freight tumbler that started not running as fast as it should and has been on PC coating duty for the last 2 years, if im only doing 50 to 100 bulets, it takes about 15 seconds to fully coat. it doesnt throw the powder or bullets like one running at full speed but more kinda "rolls" them

i use bathroom trays from bed bath and beyond for my sifting trays. i put it over a chinese food tray container and dump the tumbler into the screen tray and give a few shakes, then drop the bullets onto the baking trays