The PC Challenge.

[Hickory]

The powder coat of lead boolits is new and innovative. I haven't seen any coverage of the process and/or results in any gun rags, but then i dont get them all so I could have missed it.

The PC challenge is for someone here to write an article and submit it to a major gun magazine on the process, and outcomes of powder coating lead bullets,(if you use the word boolits you can count on rejection.) I have a feeling an in-depth article would have a chance of getting published as something new in the shooting sports.

Any takers?

[RP]

Thats a great ideal Hickory may be a way for a person to break into the writing feild they may have been looking to do already. Way out of my grammer level I am sure if someone was willing to step up others would be more then happy to share their findings with them.

[Yodogsandman]

Please don't start a run on the scrap lead supplies till I get stocked up again.

[twc1964]

If i can get my pc set up, id give it a whirl. I learned how to pc from a member and coated a good asst of boolits and have been having super success in my loading. It is to me a way for folks like me and others to bypass many of the traditional pitfalls involved i traditional casting. I love it and will soon have my hf setup and my powder by the pound asst of powders. Let the powdee fly !

[Hickory]

I think a nice write-up with some good close up pictures and a detailed description of the process would be good, along with the advantages of PC coating.
Good close-up pictures can be the selling point of the article but there should be some advantage over "plain old" cast bullets, like cleaner bore, no leading and more accurate that sort of thing. Along with where to get supplies to get setup in powder coating.

This would a good opportunity to become a freelance gunscribe.

[Freightman]

Shees, be quite! :kidding:

[bangerjim]

Great gig for some of you guys that are retired! I still have to run my company for my day job or I might consider doing a "joint effort" with a few on here. And I don't mean rolling doobies!!!!!!! :roll:

banger

[el34]

Great gig for some of you guys that are retired! I still have to run my company for my day job or I might consider doing a "joint effort" with a few on here. And I don't mean rolling doobies!!!!!!! :roll:

banger
Slacker!!! Not yer style! :smile:

I thought of you for this, you'd be perfect. Well, you're historically a little shy on pictures.

[Beagle333]

I thought Wiljen was collecting info on how we did it for a major write-up/sticky that was the "tell all" on how to do this? Mebbe he is close to finalizing that and could tweak it into an article?

[el34]

Beagle- your pics would be hugely useful for that article. Great photo composition, thorough start-to-finish views, all equipment, tons of examples. Already in the cloud.

Add a couple inside-the-barrel shots, a bit of narration, badabing badaboom.

[OnceFired]

I'd happily volunteer my experience on the PR & marketing side to get you placed with a magazine / major publication / website.

There is a wealth of data and materials (photos, instructions, etc) on this site to make a great article or even a book. The article would be more difficult due to space limitations - getting the book done would be a bigger challenge tho.

OF

[Echd]

Bear in mind that an article for general consumption must be written at a fairly low level and also needs to be brief.

There is a lot of "assumed knowledge" among a group of casters that the shooting public at large does not have. That would make writing a particularly informative PC article very difficult. Your average magazine article is going to be 2-6 pages, so assume 1000-2500 words or so. It is very difficult to explain a foreign concept in that few words, especially when most shooters don't even know about sizing or lubricating a cast boolit (and why would they, it's not something even most reloaders deal with).

That said, it would not necessarily have to be an article about the nuts and bolts of the process per se, but rather an overview of the benefits and detriments of the process itself.

Maybe I'll relive my HS newspaper editor days and give it a shot? I wish I had a bit more photogenic of a work area, though. My little single tray oven and newspaper to cover my spraying area on the garage floor isn't exactly glamorous!

[Echd]

Another important feature would be the imagery- someone with a nice camera or some good photoediting or photography skills can make a compelling article 1000x better than words alone.

Writing skills and photography skills are two very different things- not that somebody can't have both, but there's also a gear component for photography that not everyone is equipped for. Sure, most of us have a cell phone, but compare a cell phone picture in anything less than optimum conditions to even a low end DSLR!

[Echd]

To lay out some of the challenges I see in an article for any prospective takers, here is what I see, and feel free to add on or criticize this, as it certainly isn't exhaustive-

To decide on who the audience is, and thusly how we can choose our words and level of engagement with the subject (non-reloaders vs reloaders vs advanced reloaders, and I consider any person who is casting competently to be a fairly advanced reloader, especially if they're to the point where lube types and methodology even crosses their mind).

To focus on ONE method of powder coating, and probably the one most suitable for general consumption- dry tumbling, as it involves nothing you didn't already have other than maybe an empty coolwhip container and a spare toaster oven. I don't think starting an article with "get a harbor freight coupon for 20% off..." is very engaging.

To explain WHY PC is useful, needed or desired.

To explain what PC does that grease/wax lubes don't, or why it has a place and they don't.

To give a brief summary of the process.

To give well documented RESULTS and compare them to similar non-PC boolits. Empirical data is very hard to come by on this board, with lots of claims and not a lot of proof, and I am also guilty of this when I discuss my PC results. Few of us shoot under very well controlled conditions and document things very thoroughly, and that is a non-starter for writing a good informative article. 90% of threads on PC here boil down to "I just PC'd my first boolits, wish me luck!" and "I couldn't get my boolits to coat well, what did I do wrong" or the ever popular "I couldn't get my boolits to PC well, I hate PC and it sucks". There are few (not none, but very few compared to other posts) posts that show the actual groups. In other words, our signal to noise ratio is very high! To me the empirical data would involve groups at a known distance compared between similar non-PC'd boolits, and would incorporate speed measurements, temp, and other important nuances for reloading. You might not care what your altitude is or the atmospheric pressure, but it makes a difference if you live in the rockies and a reader lives in the lowlands.

I think pointing towards some long-time users of coated boolits, like Hitek and bayou, would be good, to show proof of concept.

The problem is information overload in an article like this. Up until this sentence, the word count for this post was 432 words. That's a little less than half to a third of the length the total article itself would need to be, and this was NOT a long post.

[bangerjim]

ECHD..................You are hired!!!!!! [smilie=w:

It may need to multi-parts? The metal working mags I get do that.


banger

[el34]

ECHD..................You are hired!!!!!! [smilie=w:


banger

+1
Echd has a good design for its purpose and structure, and writes well. And Beagle's pictures where applicable.

[Echd]

I will certainly give the article writing a try, although I make no promises.

The chief concern for me, however, is length vs content. I think the articles we write should focus on the what, rather than the how (although there should be a short inclusion of the "how")

Consider the purpose of the "gun rags". When I open a gun magazine, I am looking for the hot new products or news. I enjoy how-to articles very much, but it is difficult to fit one into a gun magazine. Even when an article is about the "how" in a gun magazine, it tends to focus more on a new product that enables or simplifies the "how". That may sound cynical, but hey, gun mags gotta pay the bills, and they do that through ad dollars. When was the last time you saw a negative piece in a gun magazine?

The answer I believe is to couch the question of the relevance of PC in how it bridges the gap between the traditional cast "boolit" and the dreaded "jwords" which have taken this newfangled world by storm. PC is essentially a modern revision of the paper patched bullet (although to this point, I believe PPs tend to be more accurate, within their limitations). Writing an essay beginning on the history of cast bullet improvements, and with PC being the newest and one of the more promising, is much easier and more palatable to the uninitiated than writing a how-to on powder coating your boolits. When writing your potential submissions, please bear in mind we must first inform readers of the existence and purpose of PC before they can begin to know or care about how to do it.

Never forget that the time we spend here is among some of the most driven, well-read, and ambitious of our craft. The science of powder coating is still quite unknown- at least in an empirical sense, as we know what it does and how it does vaguely, just perhaps not the limitations- and any of us that are taking part in it in any way are on the "cutting edge" of our hobby. Any other caster or reloader is going to be unlikely to know the first thing about bullet coatings in general, much less ESPC, BBDT, and DT techniques we have been trying here. I know my cool black boolits turn heads and I have plenty of friends asking for them, who have never seen such a beast before.

I only mention and emphasize these points because I know how passionate and details oriented those of us here are about these sorts of things, and it is a very, very easy thing to do when talking about a subject you care for strongly to get in over an uninitiated reader's head. Assume that even in a magazine about handloading that most readers don't even know what a lubesizer is, for instance, or why cast boolits have grooves, or any number of other things. Be very simple, be very deliberate, and be very concise.

That's just my 2 cents.

[popper]

Echd is on the right track, an intro to PC or coating in general. Lots of documentation/data here in this thread to pick through for methods & results, bling effect aside. I thought Wijen was trying to do an intro/methods thing to condense this thread into a sticky. IMHO, a edit sticky/thread here to start with comments; to allow a concise publishable work? Multi-part series for PC like Banger says?
1) benefits - general coating (PC/HiTek/others)
2) techniques/methods
3) results
4) troubleshooting
Definitely different docs for PC or HiTek.