lead bullets coated with polymer paint

[dverna]

Guys,

Thanks for responding. I can be a PITA sometimes but I like to keep things simple if I can.

LS, I have just converted to a .40 Glock and have heard about the potential issues with leading. I have already bought an aftermarket 9mm barrel to shoot lead bullets for cheaper practice and I purchased a PB gas check maker from Pat Marlin to try on lead .40 bullets. With the GC's I hope I can run a softer alloy and not lead too badly - we will see.

Popper, I will look at the other thread. For rifle work, accuracy is almost everything to me. I will go to a lot of added effort to get a 1/2" off average groups size at 100 yards. And if you can shoot a softer bullet that is a big plus for hunting. Cast pistol bullets have given me all the accuracy I want so another 1/2" at 50 yards will not be worth it for me. I do not shoot pistols at 50 yards any more so if I can hit a tennis ball at 25 yards that is all the accuracy I need. I plan on producing self defense bullets that will expand. My direction has been to use as soft a HP bullet as I can with a GC. If it shoots for 50 rounds before leading, that will do the job. I can practice with a harder bullet (preferably without a GC) so I can make blasting ammo simply and easily. PC coated self-defense rounds in neon green might not be that great if I ever needed to shoot anyone. Someone might wonder *** is this guy making/doing? KISS.

[bangerjim]

Attachment 73070Attachment 73071Have been doing some "playing around" with the HF gun and system.

1st I bought a $5.00 air reg they sell and it is perfect for what this gun needs. See picture. I bought a couple 1/4" MNPT to plastic tubing barb adaptors at Lowe's and used aquarium tubing for the air line. Then "stiffed the whole thing in some 1/2" black ribbed plastic wire surround. Taped the ends....and now have an "all-in-one" high voltage and air supply hose. I just hate having wires and hoses running around! You don NOT need a standard heavy big rubber 1/4" air line witn big brass disconnects on the ends to run this little dude. I put the disconnect ONLY on the REGULATOR.

The little reg and the small tubing give more than enough air pressure/flow to "puff" the powder out of the gun. I have found if I gently tap the bottle against my hand B-4 pulling the trigger, it give a perfect flow and coverage.

Also do NOT screw the bottle of poweder on the gun. That is why they give you 2 empty bottles with the gun. Put only about an inch of poweder in the empty bottle!

The coating is perfect, as seen by the red and black 45 cal slugs I coated this morning. Coat-bake-coat-bake is the perfect thickness. Sized perfectly.

See the "charpy" impact test on one of them. I hit that sucker hard from the top and the side with a 4# hammer and could not get the coating to crack or come off!

I have found my new "madness" !!!! BWAHH-HAAA-HAAA!

To the wife was said a few years ago: "this reloading hobby will save us hundreds of dollars"...........(is now costing us thousands!).

bangerjim

[Frankv]

It didn't work, went back to tumbling. Coated 500 in an hour while I was casting another 500 9/125 gr.Will post pictures later.

[popper]

Bangerjim - great idea! Think I will attach the reg to the yellow box.

[TES]

Banger it looks like a fair amount came off the base. Is it just very thin?

[bangerjim]

Banger it looks like a fair amount came off the base. Is it just very thin?

That was an "oversize" thru the die. And.....it was only 1 coat! The sizing die actuatlly flowed the lead off the end of the slug. It was coated, but that one had a lump on the back end that the sizer did not like. I knew it would be gone because I really had to crank on the handle to get the slug thru the die. I just used it because I did not want to waste any of the good ones on the hammer & anvil test.

All the other ones are fully coated and the sizer does not take anything off..... if the base boolit is within spec. My 6 cav mold is normally within a thou of where the die is. This one was a little different - probably hit the pan when I dumped them out of the mold. I dump into a wet towel normally, but occasionally one misses and hits the bricks or the pan. Then back in the pot. This one missed the return trip--------- for now.

Sorry for any confusion but this stuff DOES NOT COME OFF!


bangerjim

[piglet]

It didn't work, went back to tumbling. Coated 500 in an hour while I was casting another 500 9/125 gr.Will post pictures later.

Yes, the tumbling method works best for me too. Very thin mix, first bullets in the bucket, then the mix and very small amount of it, then shake, then while the bullets are still wet, pour on the mesh.
Then dry and bake.
Then repeat this two more times.

[Frankv]

You got it.

[cbunt1]

Almost 1150 posts into this thread, and I’ve read every single one of them, and reread several. I’ve been watching this thread with much interest since the very beginning. It’s time for me to give back some of what I’ve gained. The initial timing of this thread was perfect—I had just started to play with the concept with a friend, but we really hadn’t gotten beyond sharing ideas over burritos and beer—always a pleasant and worthwhile endeavor, if not very productive.

I apologize for the length of this post—I’m not the most succinct writer, and I’ve been pretty quiet up to this point—so I’m afraid I have quite a bit to say here!

As a bit of background, let me mention that I am what you might consider a “serious” hobby caster. I’m nowhere near commercial, but I’m currently casting about 1500-2000# of bullets a year. I’ve been lubing with Lars CR with great success, but have been looking for a lube product that is a little more acceptable indoors, and will produce less smoke than traditional lubed bullets.

I belong to an IDPA club, and a group of us has “co-oped” to reduce the costs of our components and materials. I cast a large number of the projectiles for the group, and we pool resources/needs to buy relatively large quantities of powder/primers etc. I only mention all of this to suggest the volume at which we shoot, cast, and load. As I say, I’m hardly “commercial,” but border on many of the needs and production techniques of a small commercial caster. I’m doing most of my work on a master caster, and up until now the lube process has been a bottleneck, even with a Star. I can’t justify the addition of collators for the casting side (although several of us do use bullet feeders on the loading presses).

I recently received a kit of the HI-TEK Supercoat from Donnie at Bayou Bullets, and received it this past Friday. Since then I’ve coated and baked around 3,000 bullets with very good results, and a slight learning curve. I’ll pass as much of this curve along as I can, and maybe help some of you off the fence on trying this process.

As with many things in the Boolit Casting world, I’ve discovered that while we can make it as technical as we want to, once you get the basics in place, there’s a lot of room for variance and huge margins of error that will still produce excellent results—provided you control most of the process. That is to say that you can’t be completely haphazard with the process, but it turns out not to be rocket science either—this stuff is very forgiving of mistakes, failure is obvious, and easily correctable.

Here are a few observations:
1) The HI-TEK itself is pretty forgiving of dilution. As long as the 5:1 ratio of coating material to catalyst is maintained, you can dilute a little more or less to your personal needs. I’ve had the best results so far with a two-application process at 5 parts Acetone, 5 parts coating, and 1 part catalyst. I did try 6:5:1 (additional Acetone) and I liked the viscosity, but found that it left bare edges of a 200gr H&G 68 .45 SWC, even after two coats. The third coat of the extra-thin mix made it a real headache to get through the sizer.

2) You can pre-mix your components and store them (sealed) for a few days with no ill results. I suspect 3-4 days is no problem, but from what I can tell much longer than that wouldn’t be good.

3) This stuff goes a long way. Using my 5:5:1 ratio, measuring by TEASPOONS, I was able to coat about 1500 135 grain 9mm bullets three times. I don’t think I really got enough on the second coat, so realistically, I think that amount would do just about 2000 of these bullets with a proper 2-coat process.

4) When agitating the bullets with the coating, you’ll “hear” the difference when they begin to stick. Once the sound changes (they start to stick together) it’s time to stop agitating and lay them out to dry. The tackiness goes away pretty quickly, and once they’re dried, you don’t have to rush to the oven with the bullets. I’ve tried a 2 day wait time with no ill-effects, and one the tackiness goes away (after about 10-15 minutes) they handle just like they did before you put anything on them. So far this has worked for me agitating by hand in a small bucket, and in large quantities in a cement mixer.

5) I haven’t had any issues with bullets “sticking” or “fusing” together in the oven, even when they’re piled more than one layer deep. The only issue with stacking them too deep is that the heat transfer may not make it to the core. I don’t recommend “piling” them into the oven, but they don’t tend to fuse together like the same pile did when I tried a traditional powder-coating (blown/sprayed on) process.

6) As soon as the bullets come out of the oven, I shake the pan to loosen them, and try them with a bit of acetone on a rag—if I get any blue streaks, I know they need a bit longer in the oven. I do this at the end of each cure cycle. Again, the “failure” here is obvious and correctable—if you get a blue mark, put them back in the oven for a couple of minutes.

7) Let them cool between coatings. If you don’t cool them long enough, it doesn’t hurt the coating, but it sure does flash the acetone fast, and dries too quickly. Should you manage to flash your coating and get the bullets “sticky” before the coating is distributed, you can just let them cool, add a tiny bit of coating, and shake again. Once again, obvious failure, and easy error correction.

8) When it comes time to size the finished product, lube them slightly, like you would cases in a progressive loader. I use Lee case lube mixed in 90% alcohol quite successfully. I use the Lee because it won’t foul powder down the road, it’s cheap, and I already have it around for my progressive loading. It doesn’t take very much at all, but I found that it’s easy to stick a bullet in a Star machine if you don’t have SOME lube in the process. I lube on a Star using Lathesmith dies, with the lube-pump arm disconnected—I’m final sizing only, and with just a mist of the alcohol/lee case lube, they slide through just fine. Without any lube, I have put enough pressure through the dies to leave a distinct indentation of my punch on the base of the boolit.


The Hi-Tek process, while not quite “foolproof” is certainly forgiving—especially to a tinkerer. I haven’t gotten it down to a science yet, and I’m still playing with “scaling,” but it seems to be more than viable at this point.

I haven’t had a chance to test the bullets I’ve made and coated yet (I will this Thursday evening) but I really don’t expect any issues. Several of us have been using the Bayou Bullets with great success for some time—which is one of the reasons I jumped on the bandwagon here—it’s a proven product in the marketplace, so any issues I do encounter are related to MY process, and not the product.

I’m still open to other coatings/products, but I can’t help thinking that first finding a working process with a known working product was best—again, to eliminate any questions of whether problems are due to the product applied, or the product application.

I hope my experiences and information help some of you. I can’t begin to pay back all the valuable information and years of collective experience I have access to in this forum, but I’d like to try to contribute SOMETHING!

[Ausglock]

Outstanding Post, cbunt1.
I have found a lot of similar things that you have.

Tonight I am going to removed all the lube from my RCBS LAM2, remove the bullet push up assembly and use the LAM2 as a push through sizer and see what happens.
My coated bullets are great, except for the 40 cals. But I'm working on it
This HI-TEK Supercoat is great stuff.
All the best from OZ, Mate.

[LongGun1]

Outstanding Post, cbunt1.
.

Fully agree!!

I am about to get started with casting in volume..

..waiting for my RCBS Pro-Melt & accessories to arrive later this week.

Since I will be running these boolits thru gas operated, (mostly) integral suppressed 300 Blk (subsonic & supersonic) for friends, family & myself. .

..this coating is basically a 'must have' for trouble-free operation...IMO!

Thanks for laying your proven methods out in such a way to be easily incorporated into a newbe's best practices!

[popper]

cbunt1 - by your numbers & ~$75/liter from Donnie, that's ~ $.10/100 for the coating, ~ 2000 x the cost of HF powder ($5/# / 2k CBs which is LOW), not amortizing the equipment cost. Not knocking it, just some numbers. So far we have the hi tek, piglet & standard ES application methods, TES has another possible one. Things we don't know are effective BHN, abrasion & COF for the various materials. Any data would be helpful but IMHO, we will use what works for each, bbl will be worn after 100K rounds anyway.

[cbunt1]

cbunt1 - by your numbers & ~$75/liter from Donnie, that's ~ $.10/100 for the coating, ~ 2000 x the cost of HF powder ($5/# & 2k CBs which is LOW), not amortizing the equipment cost. Not knocking it, just some numbers.

I don't remember what I paid for the HF Powder Coating I was playing with a while back, but I agree that the Powder Coat/Acetone technique is cheaper, and I'll certainly give it a shot in the future--just because I like options (and experimenting).

On the other hand, I'm guesstimating that coating bullets with the Hi-Tek puts my cost close enough to using Lars CR as to be insignificant -- to the tune of $.001504 per bullet for the CR lube vs. $.00176 for the Hi-Tek -- this is based on an average of 1250 bullets per stick at $1.88 per stick (accounts for shipping @ 1.65/stick and 24 sticks in a shipment). Truth is, I get many many more bullets from a stick than 1250 in some cases, and just a shade over 1000 for others (i.e. a 200 H&G 68 has a bigger lube groove than a 135 gr. 9mm RN -- and my old Kieth-style 158 gr. SWC molds have a lube groove that more resembles a trench.) Bullet sizing, surface area, lube groove differences and such make it difficult to quantify to such a fine level -- but suffice it to say that even if I coat way too thick, or waste wax lube, we're still talking about the smallest factor in production cost.

The ultimate savings (I think--time will tell) will come in the elimination of a bottleneck in sizing, since there will be no need to stop and change sticks in the Star, nor will "nose up/nose down" matter anymore for sizing--meaning I should be able to hook a Mr. Bullet Feeder directly to the Star with no tubes/flippers necessary.

Of course, Powder Coat, Hi-Tek, or any other dry film lube solves the above bottleneck, so it's a matter of availability and routine.

I'm coming to the conclusion that there are really no "wrong" answers once we arrive at a workable application process--and for indoor and action-pistol games, they're all a major advancement.

[cbunt1]

Fully agree!!



Thanks for laying your proven methods out in such a way to be easily incorporated into a newbe's best practices!

I'm glad I can help, but I can't take credit for "my" proven methods -- it's been a collective and collaborative effort, and I just leveraged the successes of others in the thread. Input from HI-TEK and swamprat were especially crucial to my getting where I am. I didn't bother telling about some of my train-wreck early experiments, like the time I fused about 50 SWC's together with powder coating in an ingot mold on a hot plate (I didn't have an oven yet to work with!)--only after covering a corner of my garage with fine red powder!

Which reminds me--I should edit my earlier post with this (later today?)...GET A RESPIRATOR. Acetone isn't good stuff, and you really don't want to bake yourself every time you bake a batch of boolits, nevermind the health concerns of messing with this kind of stuff regularly.

[bmiller]

I don't remember what I paid for the HF Powder Coating I was playing with a while back, but I agree that the Powder Coat/Acetone technique is cheaper, and I'll certainly give it a shot in the future--just because I like options (and experimenting).

On the other hand, I'm guesstimating that coating bullets with the Hi-Tek puts my cost close enough to using Lars CR as to be insignificant -- to the tune of $.001504 per bullet for the CR lube vs. $.00176 for the Hi-Tek -- this is based on an average of 1250 bullets per stick at $1.88 per stick (accounts for shipping @ 1.65/stick and 24 sticks in a shipment). Truth is, I get many many more bullets from a stick than 1250 in some cases, and just a shade over 1000 for others (i.e. a 200 H&G 68 has a bigger lube groove than a 135 gr. 9mm RN -- and my old Kieth-style 158 gr. SWC molds have a lube groove that more resembles a trench.) Bullet sizing, surface area, lube groove differences and such make it difficult to quantify to such a fine level -- but suffice it to say that even if I coat way too thick, or waste wax lube, we're still talking about the smallest factor in production cost.

The ultimate savings (I think--time will tell) will come in the elimination of a bottleneck in sizing, since there will be no need to stop and change sticks in the Star, nor will "nose up/nose down" matter anymore for sizing--meaning I should be able to hook a Mr. Bullet Feeder directly to the Star with no tubes/flippers necessary.

Of course, Powder Coat, Hi-Tek, or any other dry film lube solves the above bottleneck, so it's a matter of availability and routine.

I'm coming to the conclusion that there are really no "wrong" answers once we arrive at a workable application process--and for indoor and action-pistol games, they're all a major advancement.

I am probably going to stir a hornet's nest but, I eliminated the sizing bottleneck by not sizing. I run a Lee final size die in my 650. When I pull the bullets they are sized about .357. I have shot 20,000 in the last year using this method.

[seedeeze]

cbunt1 - by your numbers & ~$75/liter from Donnie, that's ~ $.10/100 for the coating, ~ 2000 x the cost of HF powder ($5/# / 2k CBs which is LOW), not amortizing the equipment cost. Not knocking it, just some numbers. So far we have the hi tek, piglet & standard ES application methods, TES has another possible one. Things we don't know are effective BHN, abrasion & COF for the various materials. Any data would be helpful but IMHO, we will use what works for each, bbl will be worn after 100K rounds anyway.

The initial cost is whats preventing me from diving into the hi-tek system, that and to some degree the commitment to one color of 24k-35k pills. If the the red-copper is close to what actual fmj looks then I can probably live with that. Can anyone post a pic of their red-copper coating?

[cbunt1]

I am probably going to stir a hornet's nest but, I eliminated the sizing bottleneck by not sizing. I run a Lee final size die in my 650. When I pull the bullets they are sized about .357. I have shot 20,000 in the last year using this method.

Nah, no hornet's nest with that. It works for you in your gun(s), and saves an extra step--That's what we're all after in the long run. I think the complaints we hear about the Lee Factory Crimp dies come into play where someone has determined they need an "oversize" bullet for a particular barrel, and the FCD swages the perfectly sized bullet below their intended target. Combine that with the potential for brass "spring-back" in the process, and it doesn't work for them.

I never had any issues in my guns with the FCD swaging my bullets down, but I did run into an XDM that threw tumblers with certain bullets I had run through the FCD--but it was a one-off case. My Beretta actually QUIT throwing tumblers w/lead when I started using the FCD and sizing the slugs to .356. In fact, it was chasing tumblers in that gun that got me into this DIY Boolit Casting in the first place!

[popper]

we're still talking about the smallest factor in production cost.

Agree, but these numbers may help others decide what they want to do. Lubrisizer starts ~ $ 150 +. I stopped pre-sizing pistol, only save ~ 1/2 hr on a single stage & Lee push thru - no pre-lube to clean, die stays clean, no difference in accuracy. Got a lot of variants to try when I get to the rifle range, pistol works fine. I'm a hobbyist. Volume producers do care about $ and man/hrs.

[docmagnum357]

I have followed this thread and the other similar one fairly closely. Being somewhat cheap, I opted for the Piglet method. I bought some black Powder paint at Harbor freight, crossed the parking lot and went into the goodwill store and bought a $13 convection oven. I already had a cement mixer.

What I wound up with was taking a square cat litter bucket and replacing the mixer's drum with a rectangular 5 gallon cat liter bucket. I used two coats on my first small run of Lee 125 grain 2r 9mm bullets. I mixed three parts acetone to one part Powder. I tumbled in the mixer until the acetone flashed away. I got very even coverage. I baked, and coated again with a thicker coat. I haven't tried them yet, but they look good. the coating lived through sizing in a Lee push through .357 die. I have two 38 specials I am going to try these boolits in. I am going to get a .355 die and see what happens in my GLOCK 17 and my Cz 75 9mms. I have a Lee 200 grain SWC on backorder from Midway that mimics the H&G # 68 200 grain Semi Wad cutter.

I never gave two hoots about a dirty gun until I got started shooting USPSA matches. I lost several places in my last match because of ammo problems. From here it looks like reliability and cleanliness will be greatly improved.

[bmiller]

Pics?