Cast Bullet Coating with Epoxy Paint

[anachronism]

What are you hoping to accomplish by painting your bullets? I'd be concerned that the paint could be transferred to the bore, where it would be a real pain to remove, this seems really likely. If you want to paint your bullets, use mold release, or spray graphite to get at least a little lubrication in the process. Paint is not a lubricant.

[smlekid]

do they look anything like these?
http://www.hrbc.com.au/
they sure look painted when you look at them hammertone blue works well dry and seems to lube very well

[Leftoverdj]

There was once a lube called Bullet Master. It was mostly moly-D in a single base epoxy resin carrier, and worked really well for high velocity rifle boolits. It was also a bear to apply and toxic about six different ways. It may well have been banned,

The Nyclad bullets were much different. The plastic exterior was far thicker, much like a plastic jacket. They worked quite well until the plastic age hardened and started flaking off. That took several years, though.

[JIMinPHX]

here in the philippines there are alot of colored bullet heads they call it teflon coated, but I think it is not teflon but only epoxy paint because it is very hard to scratch by the nails, the thing I noticed , becaused I tried shooting one that has been coated versus the none coated one, I noticed when I cleaned my barrel, my barrel shows no lead deposits compared to the none coated bullet head which shows a lot of lead deposits.

Hope any one could give their insights regarding my findings.. thank you!

To the best of my knowledge, the only Teflon coated bullets were steel core. The Teflon was there to protect the barrel from the hard steel core. They were designed for high penetration.

[JIMinPHX]

rfr,
What is in your memory banks about these old Nyclad bullets?
I found a supply(from 80s?) of them the other day I had evidently decided against loading.
Now I'm not sure why I decided that?
CRS is a crippling disease!
Any information?
Thanks.
PS Still banned? Thought I read something about Federal selling something called nyclad.
??

I used to shoot nyclad .38s in a snubby back when they were regularly available in the Boston area. They were nothing special balistically, as far as i could tell. They were just a real soft lead core HP with a plastic coating. The nice thing about them was that they left the gun real easy to clean. 3 or 4 wet/dry passes with patches & you were done in less than 5 minutes. There was never any fouling. They were a bit expensive though.

[JIMinPHX]

Billy's brand cast bullets use a moly coating that covers the whole boolit & looks a bit like paint.

[sargenv]

Billy's, Bear creek, and Precision are three that are moly coated and all are "Black Bullets". They appear to be painted black, but it's just their moly coating.

[TAWILDCATT]

you have another problem if you are getting leading.I shoot all season and dont clean my 45.or 38.I dont get leading.

[Russel Nash]

sargenv wrote:

Billy's, Bear creek, and Precision are three that are moly coated and all are "Black Bullets". They appear to be painted black, but it's just their moly coating.

A guy up in Wisconsin makes moly coated bullets too, now. His name is Tom Drazy, he owns Drazy Metal Works (he makes steel targets). The name of his bullet company is Black Bullets International.

And then Jerry Miculek's brother, Donnie, owns Bayou Bullets. It is also a black bullet of some sort, but I am not so sure that it is a moly coating.

I will be back in a minute with another post. I have to do another search.

[leftiye]

A plastic that you dipped boolits in and let them dry (cure) shouldn't be a real big problem to come up with. Or epoxy with MDS in it.

[Russel Nash]

Okay, here is the thread I am looking for:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=31375

I stumbled across it quite by accident probably when I first joined the forum.

Scroll down some or go to the 2nd page. There is a post by Craig Westerman where he talks about the Sandstrom 27A liquid.

I bought a quart of that, and I experimented a little bit with it coating my cast boolits. I think what I found was that I need to size the boolits down even smaller, AND I needed to figure out a way to dry them without the liquid leaving big clumps on the boolits.

Do you guys have any recommendations?

The goal at the time was to make a less smokey cast boolit, because everyone believes that the smoke from a cast boolit is due to the lube on/in the grooves.

I have since experimented with UNlubed boolits and I think that is simply not true.

Back then when I was tinkering with the Sandstrom 27A liquid, I kinda had dollar signs in my eyes. I pictured being able to go to matches and sell a few thousand of my "moly coated" boolits. This USPSA and Steel Challenge habit/hobby gets expensive, so having a way for it to pay for itself would be ideal.

The demand for boolits from the USPSA'ers and the IDPA'ers went ballistic (no pun intended) about a year ago and some of those moly coated bullet manufacturers were back logged for 6 weeks or more.

Another thing of interest to me is/was.... How does or did this Craig Westerman guy know about the Sandstrom 27A liquid? And does he know anything about the application process?

I don't suppose any of you guys know him.???? I tried sending him a PM here, and got nothing back. And then I tried to track him down via the Brian Enos forums. No luck there either.

[leadeye]

When I was in the industrial coatings business we made several epoxy finishes that had high loads of 10 micron Teflon powder in them. They were primarily for machinery that would cut and move paper/cardboard which is abrasive over time. Worked very well as the initial wear only exposed more teflon, the epoxy was used for its strength and wetting ability.

[jbunny]

leadeye; are u familiar with TFE. i get it in spray cans and it's very slipery. i'm gona try
this as lube instead of alox as soon as the weather breaks. just haveing second thoughts, while i'm waiting for the wheather, i'll spray a few bullets and put the torch
to them like the lee catalog melting bullets coated with alox. we'll see if it takes the
high temps.
regards
jb

[Uncle R.]

leadeye; are u familiar with TFE. i get it in spray cans and it's very slipery. i'm gona try
this as lube instead of alox as soon as the weather breaks. just haveing second thoughts, while i'm waiting for the wheather, i'll spray a few bullets and put the torch
to them like the lee catalog melting bullets coated with alox. we'll see if it takes the
high temps.
regards
jb

Torching TFE is NOT a good idea - it gives off deadly gases when overheated.

[Trifocals]

Quite a number of years ago I had a Ruger SS BH .357. On it I had mounted a small sight sold By Thompson Center. The sight worked with ambient light and had tapered green crosshairs. I was sighting this combo in at 100yds using sandbag rest. The ammo was S&W Nyclad. Once sighted in, I shot (3) consecutive groups at 100 yds that were all one ragged hole. Great revolver, great ammo. As I was prone to do in those days, I stupidly sold the Ruger. More to the point of this thread: The problem I foresee with any type of type of paint coating is an even application. Perhaps powder coating could work. I know there are paint applications wherein an electrical charge is applied to the object to be painted and the paint is attracted to the object. Someone with knowledge of this process may be able to shed more light on it. Most anything is possible with enough research, trial and error. LOL

[Russel Nash]

There was one guy I was corresponding back and forth with via YouTube. He sent me this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOR-SX8A0Oc

At about the 35 second mark, you get to see how they tumble candy.

He is thinking that is how the big 3 (Precision, Bear Creek, & Black Bullets Int'l) coat their bullets with the moly.

Maybe that is how they get an even coating of moly.

And somehow they are drying the boolits, so that if there is any excess left on them, it doesn't dry that way as one big clump.

Maybe there are using vibrating screens???

[stiles]

I bought a quart of that, and I experimented a little bit with it coating my cast boolits. I think what I found was that I need to size the boolits down even smaller, AND I needed to figure out a way to dry them without the liquid leaving big clumps on the boolits.

Do you guys have any recommendations?

I'd tumble em to apply, kinda like a candy maker but with a cheapish cement mixer with some type of heater to start to cure the coating (maybe a propane infrared heater).

Another thing of interest to me is/was....
How does or did this Craig Westerman guy know about the Sandstrom 27A liquid? And does he know anything about the application process?

Sandstorm 27a in gun circles is mostly known for refinishing GI M-16 mags, that's my guess how he came up with that.

Patent #4,196,670 mentions Sandstorm 47-A. It's discontinued but it's a solvent thinned epoxy phenolic resin solid film lube. The patent also mentions a "lacquer like" resin carrier which 27a and the successor 28a use lacquer. LC-300 is Sandstorms lowest temperature curing epoxy solid film lube

[Russel Nash]

Okay, thanks!

Just 10 posts, eh?

Where were you 2 years ago when I tripped across that Sandstrom thread?



Just kidding....

Yeah, I had heard from a higher ranked shooter that one of the manufacturers uses a heated vibratory tumbler to coat his boolits with. I guess it is or was one of those things that was meant originally for industrial use only.

You are right about the lacquer part. I used to spray lacquer on cabinets and furniture for a living (if you could call it that). So the instant I started tinkering with that 27A, I was like , "Hmmn...okay... where is my respirator?"

IIRC, from the Material Data Safety Sheet, it says it contains MEK.

[runfiverun]

i do know that the coated boolits are also being used in australia.
they have iirc black blue and green coatings maybe one of the guy's from down there might have some insight.

as far as the nylon coated stuff goes i can't really add any more than was already said about them.
i've been shooting plain cast in revolvers so long i just never paid a whole lot of attention to what anybody was selling.

[HI-TEK]

The coated projectiles in the Phillipines originated from Australia, and manufacturer Top Score. They used the HI-TEK-LUBe coating made by J&M Specialized Products in Australia.
The coatings have been around since 1992 in Australia and has replaced all other lubes.
Joe