Nikolaus
02-16-2014, 03:12 AM
I am new to casting, and coating. I cast about 400 9mm and .45acp bullets last week (my first casting session). I have been doing a lot of research mainly here before going down this road. Thank you guys for all your help!
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/IMG_16271.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/IMG_16271.jpg.html)
With that said. Here we go. I always planned on powder coating as I shoot indoor range for practice, and don't want to deal with the smoke. Since I am new to the hobby I have been trying to save money. That is how I convinced myself to start casting, is to save money. I read many posts about dry tumble, and piglet methods of powder coating. I stopped in at Harbor Freight and picked one lb of yellow, and one of red. It was all that they had. I started with yellow. I tumbled in a cool whip container with 50 .45acp and 1 tea spoon of powder. Cooked them at 400 degrees for 20 minutes like the directions say. Was not satisfied with the coat so I did it again. Still not satisfied, I researched more and found that yellow does not work that well for dry tumble. The bullets are covered well. They sized to .452 from .457 just fine. I am sure they are worthy of loading up and shooting, just a little ugly. I can live with that.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/IMG_16461.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/IMG_16461.jpg.html)
The next day I figured I would give the red a go around. I did the exact same procedure with the red Harbor Freight powder. The results were really good. Complete coverage, no light areas where you can see lead through the paint. I was really impressed. I understand an ES gun is the preferred method, but I am just testing the waters, and I really like the results from the red powder with the dry tumble. They hammer tested ok, and I am really confident in loading them and shooting them.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/IMG_16451.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/IMG_16451.jpg.html)
So today, the family and I were out shopping and I made a stop at a different Harbor Freight. They had the black and white powders in stock and on sale for $4 a lb. I picked up one of each. After hearing that black was really picky with both dry tumble, and piglet methods, I was hesitant to buy. I noticed they had a little air brush style paint gun on sale for 9.99, and it came with an adapter for an air compressor. I have a large air compressor in my garage. I picked up the little gun, and a regulator to get it to the 25-50psi the gun is rated for. I had no intention of buying the gun when I went there. I was going to try to piglet method the black, and the white, or combinations of the 4 colors.
So tonight I ventured on a new journey, with no prior reading or advice on how to do it. I assemble the air gun, and made a plan. I mixed the powder with acetone at a ratio of 3:1 in a glass pickle jar with a .45 in the base as a stir. Hindsight is 20/20 and I do not recommend this as it actually broke and ruined an old pair of sweat pants I was wearing. Really no loss, and chalk it up to experience. But I did get a good amount mixed, HF black. And I sprayed 10 bullets as a small test batch the solution. I would say I used about 2x the amount of powder with this method than dry tumbling, but the results were shocking to me. The best looking bullets I have made yet. So figuring its too good to be true I did a hammer test. Passed with flying colors. So I guess being too hesitant to buy the ES gun, which they didn't have in stock today anyways, I stumbled on something that appears to work.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/IMG_16431.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/IMG_16431.jpg.html)
Though there are some draw backs to this method, and I may have to rethink the spray gun, or the containers I use to mix, or the chemical I use to dilute the powder to liquid. The cheap little gun is made mostly of plastic. Acetone is hard on plastic as the paint reservoirs that come with the gun(5 of them) get soft after 1 use. The entire device is made of plastic. The powder is hard to mix with acetone, hence why I was using a bullet to stir it, much like paint can. I ran into a issue I am sure ES guys found at first is you have to stagger them a bit to get full coverage. My next test was to try to do 50 at a time, and they were positioned too close and I did not get full coverage. It does have one thing going for it, the whole air/gun mechanism does not come in contact with the solution, only the reservoir, so I wont ruin the actual gun. If that even matters, as it was only 10 bucks.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/boolits/IMG_16481.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/boolits/IMG_16481.jpg.html)
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/IMG_16271.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/IMG_16271.jpg.html)
With that said. Here we go. I always planned on powder coating as I shoot indoor range for practice, and don't want to deal with the smoke. Since I am new to the hobby I have been trying to save money. That is how I convinced myself to start casting, is to save money. I read many posts about dry tumble, and piglet methods of powder coating. I stopped in at Harbor Freight and picked one lb of yellow, and one of red. It was all that they had. I started with yellow. I tumbled in a cool whip container with 50 .45acp and 1 tea spoon of powder. Cooked them at 400 degrees for 20 minutes like the directions say. Was not satisfied with the coat so I did it again. Still not satisfied, I researched more and found that yellow does not work that well for dry tumble. The bullets are covered well. They sized to .452 from .457 just fine. I am sure they are worthy of loading up and shooting, just a little ugly. I can live with that.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/IMG_16461.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/IMG_16461.jpg.html)
The next day I figured I would give the red a go around. I did the exact same procedure with the red Harbor Freight powder. The results were really good. Complete coverage, no light areas where you can see lead through the paint. I was really impressed. I understand an ES gun is the preferred method, but I am just testing the waters, and I really like the results from the red powder with the dry tumble. They hammer tested ok, and I am really confident in loading them and shooting them.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/IMG_16451.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/IMG_16451.jpg.html)
So today, the family and I were out shopping and I made a stop at a different Harbor Freight. They had the black and white powders in stock and on sale for $4 a lb. I picked up one of each. After hearing that black was really picky with both dry tumble, and piglet methods, I was hesitant to buy. I noticed they had a little air brush style paint gun on sale for 9.99, and it came with an adapter for an air compressor. I have a large air compressor in my garage. I picked up the little gun, and a regulator to get it to the 25-50psi the gun is rated for. I had no intention of buying the gun when I went there. I was going to try to piglet method the black, and the white, or combinations of the 4 colors.
So tonight I ventured on a new journey, with no prior reading or advice on how to do it. I assemble the air gun, and made a plan. I mixed the powder with acetone at a ratio of 3:1 in a glass pickle jar with a .45 in the base as a stir. Hindsight is 20/20 and I do not recommend this as it actually broke and ruined an old pair of sweat pants I was wearing. Really no loss, and chalk it up to experience. But I did get a good amount mixed, HF black. And I sprayed 10 bullets as a small test batch the solution. I would say I used about 2x the amount of powder with this method than dry tumbling, but the results were shocking to me. The best looking bullets I have made yet. So figuring its too good to be true I did a hammer test. Passed with flying colors. So I guess being too hesitant to buy the ES gun, which they didn't have in stock today anyways, I stumbled on something that appears to work.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/IMG_16431.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/IMG_16431.jpg.html)
Though there are some draw backs to this method, and I may have to rethink the spray gun, or the containers I use to mix, or the chemical I use to dilute the powder to liquid. The cheap little gun is made mostly of plastic. Acetone is hard on plastic as the paint reservoirs that come with the gun(5 of them) get soft after 1 use. The entire device is made of plastic. The powder is hard to mix with acetone, hence why I was using a bullet to stir it, much like paint can. I ran into a issue I am sure ES guys found at first is you have to stagger them a bit to get full coverage. My next test was to try to do 50 at a time, and they were positioned too close and I did not get full coverage. It does have one thing going for it, the whole air/gun mechanism does not come in contact with the solution, only the reservoir, so I wont ruin the actual gun. If that even matters, as it was only 10 bucks.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo329/Nikolausxx/boolits/IMG_16481.jpg (http://s388.photobucket.com/user/Nikolausxx/media/boolits/IMG_16481.jpg.html)