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Thread: Has anyone tried powder coating soft lead swaged bullets?

  1. #1
    Boolit Buddy
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Posts
    212

    Has anyone tried powder coating soft lead swaged bullets?

    I am considering getting the LAT-35 swaging press from RCE. Swaged bullets are, of course, soft lead which is typically not what you would use for hot loads in calibers like 357, 45-70, or any kind of rifle bullet.

    Does powder coating more or less defeat this problem? Wondering if anyone has actually tried this and got good results.

  2. #2
    Banned
    Join Date
    Dec 2018
    Posts
    3,409
    I cast a bunch of 45/70 boolits around 12 bhn, powder-coated them then sent them to another member who swaged them. I would assume from this that you don't need pure lead boolits to swage.

    PC helps with leading but is not a cure-all, I recall hearing that IF you push a PC'd pure lead boolit too fast it will "skid" on the rifling. Please correct me If I heard wrong

  3. #3
    Boolit Grand Master In Remembrance
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    South Jersey
    Posts
    6,314
    The best alloy for a 45-70 is 1:16, range tested for accuracy and slump. Dan Theodore, gun crank identified this for the BPCR community
    Regards
    John

  4. #4
    Boolit Master mehavey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Posts
    1,540
    See http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...=1#post5001471

    Pure Lead & PC
    Peas & Carrots

  5. #5
    Boolit Buddy
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Posts
    481
    My usual loads are 50% stick on wheel weights and 50% clip on with powdercoat, but I'd probably shoot pure lead as long as it was powdercoated, not sure it matters, at least not at any velocity I'd shoot it at (1300 and below out of revolvers, 1000 and below out of pistols, and I have never hot rodded a rifle load but I'd imagine I could get them going 15-1600 out of that).

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check