Quote Originally Posted by 405grain View Post
Long, long ago i read on the interweb that some people were having trouble with Harbor Freight black being gritty and abrasive. Back then HF only stocked 4 colors; red, yellow, white, and black. The red was the only color that worked halfway decent on bullets, and even then it was awful compared to Smoke's powder and Eastwood Ford light blue. Thankfully Harbor Freight stopped supplying black a long time ago (and it hasn't been missed). Like a lot of people, when powder coating bullets first became a thing I started out with HF red, but after the first time I used Smoke's powder the HF stuff went straight into the trash. I'm sure that there are lots of types of powder coat that for one reason or another are poorly suited for coating bullets, (designed for corrosion or chemical resistance, or maybe even as a non-slip surface), but Smoke has tested all the powders that he sells and all of the ones I've tried have worked really well.
The HF powders were only bad if you did the shake and bake method. They just would not stick well. I started out using it with an HF ES gun and had good results. I still use the spray on some boolits, but with Smokes powder I have moved to shake and bake for convenience. I did use a fair amount of HF matte black with no ill effects.