Air soft BBs

[Mark454]

Has anyone used the greed translucent bbs they sell at Walmart? Those are the only ones I can get locally.

I'm not getting very good coverage with one coat of HF red in a cool whip bowl. Wondering if its the bbs.

Thanks.

[Vann]

I use them, but not the way that most people do. I dumped a whole midsized bottle into one of my old vibratory polishers. I just throw a couple handfuls of boolits in it and a scoop or two of powder. After about 10 mins of run time I bake them. I couldn't find any of the black ones either.

[khmer6]

Funny. I had a mix of bbs from the same tub since I can't find black for the life of me. I finally noticed the other day that the bbs were all coated except the green colored ones!!! They weren't the translucent ones though. These were .12g 6mm bbs

[jcwit]

Why do you need bb's regardless of color?

[chutesnreloads]

Mark....just because they don't look very well coated to your eye doesn't necessarily mean they won't shoot just fine.Unless you can see big areas of bare lead,I'd try and shoot them to see how they do.Post us a pic of them if you can.Meanwhile...keep an eye out for the black BB's

[farmerjim]

Amazon and Smoke have them.

[bangerjim]

Early on in this BBDT process (almost 3 years ago), I experimented with ALL colors and weights of ASBB's because I shoot 7 different Airsoft guns and have all of them.

I found the black ones, due to the plastic they are made of, worked much better for me and my coating quality needs. Others use different lighter ones and have success for their needs.

I still highly promote the black ones to eliminate just one of the many variables in this voodoo process. I have read many posts on here saying "I do not use black ones, but my coatings are not good". Go figure? I do feel WE on here are the reason most stores do not have black BB's anymore! I used to buy them in big HUGE jugs in any Walmart I walked into. I prefer the heavier black ones in all my AS guns for accuracy.

What do BB's do? I have no scientific explanation or data, but I get much better coatings with them, so why not use them from the beginning????? I believe they help distribute the charge and help buffer the impacts of the boolits slamming around.

bangerjim

[rsrocket1]

My own experience:
When conditions are good (dry, low humidity), BB's make no difference for me in getting good coverage. In marginal conditions (spring day after a rainstorm or a summer day after the sprinklers were watering the lawn), the BB's have meant the difference between a good coat and a barely marginal coat. On a dry summer afternoon, nothing more than bullets, powder and a 1 gallon Ziplock bag are all I need and I don't do any violent shaking, just a gentle massage for a couple of minutes gives great coverage. i've tried #5 tubs, a big Styrafoam box, a plastic flower pot and a cardboard box lined with packing tape. All but the last worked well. Round sides work better than a square container.

What they do is prevent the coated bullets from touching a big surface like the walls of the tub or other bullets and rubbing the powder off in less than perfect conditions. I have not seen that BB's actually increase the static charge on the powder but any contact and release of the powder from another surface can potentially increase the static charge so they may actually help. The BB's form a very small contact point on the bullet and since they're already "dusted", they won't remove powder from the bullet when you're shaking them around.

I've used white and clear green BB's in the past but if you can find the black ones, by all means get them. It just takes one more "voodoo variable" out of the equation.

[jcwit]

Might have to give them a try someday.

[Mark454]

Alright guys. Thanks for the input. The humidity has been really high here for a few days. I wound up double coating a bunch of the last batch and they looked awesome.

I'm cooking some single coated bullets right now, I'll post pics soon

[fredj338]

I am using those, work fine so far. Smokes powders, no issues, hf red, hi humidty, i have to shake longer.

[vrh]

I just got thru coating some bullets using regular BB's in the shake and bake method. humidity is in lower 80's today. One coat coverage.
I've tried coating without BB's and it gave me very spotty coverage.157777

[Mark454]

This is one coat, 80% humidity, shaking for 90 seconds. Suggestions?



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[bangerjim]

Those look like ones I used to get B4 standardizing on the following:

#5 round conainers, either coolwhip or zip-lok screw-ons, swirling HARD 20-30 seconds, then shaking HARD up & down 10 seconds, with 3 layers of black ASBB's, and picking and sitting with hemostats on NSAF.

Bu doing exactly that procedure, I get perfect 100% coatings the first bake.

How are you doing it?

bangerjim

[Mark454]

I use a #5 cool whip container, about 2:1 ratio of bbs to boolits (volume wise), and I shake at random. Up-down, side to side, swirl, etc...

No hemostats, I just wear a rubber gloves and coat my fingertips in powder before picking them out.

[bangerjim]

I suggest trying my ideas.

Anything that touches the boolits coated with raw powder can and will leave sparse spots. I know there are those that say they do it that way (gloves), but your boolits show spots that are sparse. And those areas appear to be finger-tip spots. And those bare spots are on the critical drive band tops! Just try it for the heck of it. Get some surgical hemostats.....not the fish hook pliers or tweezers at Walmart.

Also I think you may have way too many BB's in there. I have found 3 layers in a bowl are more than enough.....I coat 50-80 at a time. Too many and the powder does not coat as well. And makes it very difficult to get the boolits out, knocking off your powder in spots.

Also consider doing the swirling/shaking is the exact order and time I listed above. It does make a difference from the many MANY times I have played around with this method. If you see a few with bare spots while picking, just do the up & down action again.

My suggestions come from 3 years of playing around with tons of options and techniques, not just BS and conjecture. Hope this helps in you quest for good coatings!

Once you get acceptable coatings, you can play around with alternate ideas and methods to see if you gain or loose anything. That is what I did.

Best of luck!

bangerjim

[Mark454]

Thanks Jim. I'll try that tomorrow.

[Dragonheart]

This is one coat, 80% humidity, shaking for 90 seconds. Suggestions?



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That looks like HF Red powder. Since I live on the gulf Coast 85% humidity is no stranger and I have never been able to get a one coat coverage using HF powder. I typically get one coat coverage using Prismatic Solid color Powders. To solve your problem try putting the bullets in a metal pan in your toaster oven set at 200 degrees or slightly less. Don't go higher than 200 degrees. Since I use a tumbler the process is simple for me as I just slowly drop the heated bullets into a running tumbler with powder & BB's, but keep an eye on them so they don't pick up too much powder as they will coat much quicker that cold bullets.

I started out using black BB's as I already had a jug and they definitely help, but recently my wife bought a 10K jug of Red BB's at a garage sale for $3. I tried the red and they work just fine for me, but given a choice I would buy the black.

[Motor]

Here in WV humidity is rarely low. When I started with HF red the only BBs I could get were the white .20g My boolits typically came out ok with one coat. I'd say they were at least a little better than the ones in the photo above.

I never did find the heavy black ones locally so I finally gave it and bought a 4000 bag of .25g on EBay. They are some brand I've never heard of.

My first time using the .25g black I could easily tell a difference. I actually had to tap the Hemostats on the edge of the bowl to shake off excess powder from some of the boolits.

The .25g black definitely made a difference for me. Even some "internet" brand.

Motor

[bangerjim]

Here in WV humidity is rarely low. When I started with HF red the only BBs I could get were the white .20g My boolits typically came out ok with one coat. I'd say they were at least a little better than the ones in the photo above.

I never did find the heavy black ones locally so I finally gave it and bought a 4000 bag of .25g on EBay. They are some brand I've never heard of.

My first time using the .25g black I could easily tell a difference. I actually had to tap the Hemostats on the edge of the bowl to shake off excess powder from some of the boolits.

The .25g black definitely made a difference for me. Even some "internet" brand.

Motor

Keep in mind.......it is NOT the brand.....it is the alloy of the plastic that makes them 0.25g in weight. Most are black per some industry standard of identification. But the brand makes no difference. I have use Crossman, brand x, brand y......but ALL are 0.25g BLACK plastic.

If you find brand X 0.25g black AirSoft BB's...those are the ones you want. The other colors are lighter in weight and a totally different alloy of plastic and are MUCH cheaper in price.

bangerjim

[fredj338]

I also have to swirl/shake a bit longer w/ HF red on high humidity days. Smokes powders work all the time, regardless of humidity. I won't likely buy HF red when it's gone, but that will be quite a awhile, PC is pretty economical.

[bangerjim]

Some do have a problem with the HF powder.

I have SEVERAL pounds of HF red and black. Use them all the time with no problems with BBDT and ESPC. I bought it back when they had it on sale for $3/#.

By mixing the 4 HF colors and Smoke's blue, I get all the colors I will ever need for both coating processes.

banger.

[Mark454]

I tried pre-heating the bullets to ~150° and got much better results. Not perfect but worlds ahead of my previous attempt

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[mold maker]

Having read all the reports of success and failure, I followed the success posts.
On a cool dry day, with the black ASBBs, NSAF, and both Smoke and HF powders, each used with a screw on #5 container, and warm boolits. I was even conscious of the time swirling and shaking, and time and temps in the oven.
I had really good coverage and even colors.
Why now, with all the experience freely given, would you try to cheapen or reinvent what works?
My thanks to all who have posted both positive and negative reports, so I could avoid all the pitfalls they've already experienced.

[bangerjim]

Having read all the reports of success and failure, I followed the success posts.
On a cool dry day, with the black ASBBs, NSAF, and both Smoke and HF powders, each used with a screw on #5 container, and warm boolits. I was even conscious of the time swirling and shaking, and time and temps in the oven.
I had really good coverage and even colors.
Why now, with all the experience freely given, would you try to cheapen or reinvent what works?
My thanks to all who have posted both positive and negative reports, so I could avoid all the pitfalls they've already experienced.

Glad you had good coating! You now know it DOES work.....very well. I get perfect coats doing it that way.

I simply say to those that will no adhere to the guidelines we have established that DO work:

"HEAR ME NOW AND BELIEVE ME LATER".

banger

[Mark454]

I see now that humidity has a huge role. We had 70%+ for a week and I had spotty coverage. Finally had a 50% day, warmed the bullets a tad, and it worked like a champ.

[RKJ]

BangerJim, I finally decided to try the powder coating thing and tried it like you said and I'm pleased. Super easy and good coating. If they shoot as I hope they will, I'm a convert.

[Dragonheart]

I am glad pre-heating has worked for you, but this was not my original idea.

When I first got into powder coating, now a couple of years ago, I knew little about the subject. I was shown some PC bullets a fellow club member had coated using a coolwhip container. I realized and was amazed that he was able to get coverage by using the small static charge generated by the plastic container. I did know about this Cast Bullet site, but had no idea that some were doing PC bullets, so I started online conversations with professional powder coaters to learn as much about the process as possible. It was from them that I learned about using Prismatic Powder, qualities and hardness of different types of powder, curing and preheating metal for a faster and more even coverage. They were doing commercial coating not bullets, but the information was valuable none the less.

I was well into powder coating bullets and experimenting with increasing my volume using case tumblers when I happened to find this "Coatings Forum". I found on this site that some was using Black plastic BB's and it made sense to include BB's into the process as they do help and made my preheating more effective and uniform.

In addition to bullets, the preheating works quite well on larger objects you may wish to coat by spraying. Once the metal is hot enough the powder melts on contact allowing you to actually see the coverage, however the coating will still have to be cured.

I just wish I had found this forum sooner as it could have saved me a lot of time and effort experimenting on my own as there is a wealth of information here; you just have to sort out what is useful.

[Motor]

I have found pre-heating to be a touchy thing. I'm glad it wasn't with boolits that I tried it. I tried to PC the pin on my folding cargo rack. Unlike with boolits I didn't get very good coverage so while it was still pretty warm I gave it another shake. OMG it was covered then. It even sagged and flowed a little on the baking sheet. I'm glad it still fit through the hole it has to go through. :shock:

Motor

PS: Mark454, Those look good. :)

[Dragonheart]

Motor,

If you want to preheat other objects for powder coating, spraying is your best choice.