Has anybody tried the "other" HArbor Freight colors?

[tomf52]

My first attempt today at the shake and bake coating went very well with the Harbor Freight red. They also had white, yellow, and dull black on the shelf. Has anybody tried these and what were your results? I would like to use the dull black if it works too.

[RP]

Red seems to work the best yellow needs two coats most of the time black fails on shake and bake and white is good for mixing with red to make pink for the ladies

[Walter Laich]

the matt black won't work in the shake and bake method.

The white and yellow don't cover well for me. Red is OK but the commercial powders are so much better.
Once you try that you probably won't go back to HF stuff

[Slenk]

I use HF powder also because it is close to me. Red works pretty good, Yellow is OK, as well as White . Black is OK if you mix with one of the other colors . and then it takes two coats for good coverage.
Red & Yellow makes Orange. White & Black will make Gray but takes 2 coats .
I use the shake & bake method .

[retread]

I spray so they all work quite well. I mix different combinations to get some neat colors and effects. I hear it is not the powder for tumble coating however.

[therealhitman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnEd3ezQy74

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn4MlMxXUuc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDKId51sDa4

[RogerDat]

If you shake and bake most report the HF colors other than red work poorly. You pay more for the better quality stuff but....
Might want to give this person a try. They have tested the products to determine if shake & bake will work with each one or if only can be used with sprayer. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?241259-Hi-quality-Powder-for-DT-or-Spraying-bullets

[rockshooter]

I discovered something lately- but this needs to be replicated by someone else.- The Harbor Freight red coverage is so-so, and Smokes "bacon grease" is the same, but mixed 50-50, coverage is 100%. The color comes out an oatmeal brown.
Loren

[rbuck351]

Approximately how many 30cal 180gr boolits would you expect to coat using the shake and bake with better powders and what do they cost? I want to try this but I don't want to mess with something that doesn't work well. I really don't want to coat anything twice.

[Spector]

Then smoke's powders are for you. I don't know how many thousands of bullets a pound of his powder will coat, but I gave away about half of my powder to a shooting buddy. I have coated thousands of boolits myself and still have plenty of powder left.

As far as ease of application using ''shake & bake'' I like his clear powder coat the best. it looks like a powdered donut coating until it glosses over in the oven and then it stays clear at that point. It is the easiest for me to gauge the coating thickness before baking. it seems like it coats the most consistently of any of the powders I have tried using ''shake & bake with air soft BB's added whether the humidity is low enough for static to be present or it is raining heavily outside or just a hot muggy summer day in Indiana.

Others here love their colors and l have to admit a fondness for Smoke's ''signal blue'' myself. It is easy to apply and gives good coverage. I can't say it's as easy as the clear, but if not it is very close to being as easy.

Recently a fellow showed a little concern at our range because I was shooting ''steel''. I assured him I was only shooting cast lead and not copper jacketed. Still all he could see were blue, green, red and purple bullets. I have returned to my clear coat roots so they can easily see they are just plain cast lead boolits with a little gloss to them.

I probably have 4 pounds of Harbor Freight red in a filing cabinet in my den that I never use now. Smoke's clear and others are just so easy to apply, Try it and you will wonder why you ever worried about the cost. I have a HF powder coat gun and compressor I have never bothered to set up. Shake and bake is just so easy for me, especially with his powders. Other members here use other brands of powders as well and seem to have great success with them. The only way Smoke's powders could be any easier for me is if ''powder coat fairies'' coated them at night while I sleep. grin...........Mike

[newton]

I am guessing here, but you may be putting 3-5 grains(maybe only 2) on a boolit. 7000 grains in a pound means well over 1000 if not well over 2000.

[Motor]

Approximately how many 30cal 180gr boolits would you expect to coat using the shake and bake with better powders and what do they cost? I want to try this but I don't want to mess with something that doesn't work well. I really don't want to coat anything twice.

If you have a Harbor Freight near by I'm sure you can get one of their 20% off coupons. So your pound of HF red powder will cost you about $5. Nobody can beat that "cost of entry". Add some Air soft BBs, Black .25gram and a free plastic bowl. The ones with a recycle #5 seem to work best.

Then you need an oven to bake them in.

I started with HF red and will continue to use it at least until it's gone. I have no complaints. I'm using it for everything pistol from .380 to 500 S&W and 30cal rifle.

I can't tell you how many boolits I'll end up PCing with that 1st pound of HF red. I've already done a bunch and it seems I haven't even put a dent in it yet.

For $5 you owe yourself a try on. :)

Motor

[rbuck351]

The nearest HF is 2000miles away by road and when I tried to order a couple years ago they wouldn't mail the powder. I'm not overly worried about the cost of the powder but I've been looking at some of the sites and some of the powders are costing $30+ per lb. If a pound will cover 1500 boolits this is still reasonable unless it has to be shipped by UPS or FedEx at a minimum of $35 to AK. I am doing ok with cast, getting 1 1/2" groups at 100yds with several of my rifles but accuracy tends to go away somewhere around 2000 to 2200 fps depending on caliber. Does anyone have success at 2400/2500 fps with PC? I don't mind buying a spray gun if it works better or better powders but I don't want it to cost 10 cents per boolit for the powder and I don't even want to start if my expectations are unreasonable. If I can't get a noticeable improvement over cast boolits with accuracy or velocity without loosing accuracy then I would rather not even start. I don't care about pretty colors and the lube mess doesn't bother me but accuracy and velocity improvements are why I'm interested. What say. Am I chasing Unicorns?

[NavyVet1959]

According to this link (https://www.austintexas.gov/handsfree), a pound of powder will cover about 25-30 sq-ft.

So, let's take the Lee TL452-230-2R for example. It has a length of 0.65" and a diameter of 0.452". Let's treat it as just a cylinder instead of the irregular object that it really is. I suspect that with most bullet designs, this will result in a calculation of a slightly larger surface area than it really has, but it's probably not too far off for initial estimates.

The surface area of a cylinder is calculated as:
pi * diameter * length + 2 * pi * radius2

So, for this example, we would be looking at:
pi * 0.452 * 0.65 + 2 * pi * (0.452/2)2
= 3.141592 * 0.65 + 2 * 3.141592 * 0.2262
= 3.141592 * 0.65 + 2 * 3.141592 * 0.051076
= 0.20420348 + 0.320919905984
= 0.525123385984 sq-in

So, going with the low figure of 25 sq-ft per pound of powder, that means 3600 sq-in per pound of powder (i.e. 25 * 12 * 12).

That also means 6855.5 bullets per pound of powder (i.e. 3600 / 0.525123385984).

If you figure $10 per pound for the powder, that means 7.3 cents per box of 50 bullets. That's pretty cheap. Harbor Freight is a bit cheaper than that and Smoke4320's is about twice that. Either way, you're not talking about that much. I've never calculated how much it costs to lube with Alox though. Considering all the Lee bullet resizing dies that I have bought and the fact that all of them come with Alox, I probably have enough of it for the rest of my life.

https://www.googledrive.com/host/0B8A9o0AImjXHfmlSQWdFVFRfSmd6d19mTG1jVXUzRWhrZk1KQ WFvdjJidlFtUERRcXh3M1k/lee-tl410-210-swc-resized-10mm-loaded-320w.jpg

[rbuck351]

Well that's plenty cheap enough even at $30 per pound. So now, is it going to help my accuracy or velocity with accuracy enough to make it worth the extra effort?

[NavyVet1959]

Well that's plenty cheap enough even at $30 per pound. So now, is it going to help my accuracy or velocity with accuracy enough to make it worth the extra effort?

Don't know... My accuracy is limited by my old eyes... Need to put the blurry front sight between the sides of the blurry rear sight and have that centered on the blurry target... Yeah, that works very well... Not...

Getting old sucks...

[rbuck351]

Well, most of my old guns can't see very well either so I put glasses on them and they can see the target a lot better now.:D My main concern is rifles and accuracy at better speed than I'm getting with lubed boolits and I wouldn't mind getting away from GCs as they take time to make and put on. Is anyone shooting PC at 2400+ with accuracy. I guess the only way to find out is to try it. I have spent a lot more time and money on other experiments, some of which were a total bust, some that work very well.
So, from what I have been reading, Smoke has the best powders and from what several have said, the clear is the easiest/best to use. Does the PC gun do a better job? I don't mind spending more if it works better and I do want to give this PC a fair test.

[NavyVet1959]

One other reason for PC is that there are some indoor ranges out there that don't like normal lubed lead bullets. They mistakenly think that the smoke from the lube that you might be generating is lead that they need to be concerned with. Trying to bring logic into the conversation doesn't work against their preconceived notions.

[exile]

Quick question, from the reading I have done it seems there is a need for airsoft BB' s to generate static electricity for more even coating. What size and color do you need and where can you get them? Thanks.

exile

[RogerDat]

Black Airsoft BB's are the best from all reports, and they worked well for me. Size I use is .25 gram not sure it matters if they are that size or the .20 gram size. It doesn't take much in a plastic bowl to do the job. Maybe a layer two or three BB's deep. Cool Whip bowl will work but something with a screw or tight snap lid in #5 plastic is better. Cool whip works but tends to leak around the lid. White BB's are reported to not work well.

Walmart, Meijers, Amazon, most of the big sporting good chains.

You can order from this guy on the forum if you have any doubts or difficulty http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?241259-Hi-quality-Powder-for-DT-or-Spraying-bullets Smoke4320 sells the BB's and you can purchase a 1 pound sample pack of 3 or maybe 4 colors to try. More expensive than the harbor freight red but in a whole different legume in terms of quality and ease of application.

[exile]

Black Airsoft BB's are the best from all reports, and they worked well for me. Size I use is .25 gram not sure it matters if they are that size or the .20 gram size. It doesn't take much in a plastic bowl to do the job. Maybe a layer two or three BB's deep. Cool Whip bowl will work but something with a screw or tight snap lid in #5 plastic is better. Cool whip works but tends to leak around the lid. White BB's are reported to not work well.

Walmart, Meijers, Amazon, most of the big sporting good chains.

You can order from this guy on the forum if you have any doubts or difficulty http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?241259-Hi-quality-Powder-for-DT-or-Spraying-bullets Smoke4320 sells the BB's and you can purchase a 1 pound sample pack of 3 or maybe 4 colors to try. More expensive than the harbor freight red but in a whole different legume in terms of quality and ease of application.


Thanks

exile

[BlaineD]

I've coated over 7000 .358 and .356 boolits with one pound sample pack from Smoke, and 1 pound of HF red, and I still have a **** load of powder left.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[exile]

So, I ordered some powder and one of the colours is a purple 'metal flake' powder. It occurs to me to wonder if the metal flake would damage a barrel with repeated use? Also, how do you guys cure your powder coat before sizing or loading? I have seen some people water quench after coating. How long should you wait after coating to use your boolits? Any tips to getting a thin coat using the shake and bake method?

Sorry for the (repeated) thread hijack. I have started threads in the past, but they just don't seem to go anywhere. Thanks.

exile

[n.h.schmidt]

exile
Don't know about the metal flake powders. The powder coat is cured when you bake it. Nothing else needs to be done. The water quench is to get the boolits harder by heat treating .This seems to work even through the powder coat. I think the thinnest coating I get is plucking the boolits out of the whatever container used with a tweezer and taping the tweezer on the edge to tap off some powder. Thinner yet is Hy-teck. I am a nube too at this.
n.h.schmidt

[exile]

exile
Don't know about the metal flake powders. The powder coat is cured when you bake it. Nothing else needs to be done. The water quench is to get the boolits harder by heat treating .This seems to work even through the powder coat. I think the thinnest coating I get is plucking the boolits out of the whatever container used with a tweezer and taping the tweezer on the edge to tap off some powder. Thinner yet is Hy-teck. I am a nube too at this.
n.h.schmidt

Thanks. exile

[exile]

So, powder-coated my first boolits today, using the shake and bake method.;The green covered perfectly on the first try.;The purple powder is beautiful, but coated very thin and looks more like Hi-tek than powder-coat. ;The purple boolits were water quenched after coating.;Has anyone tried a second coat, does it work? The boolits looked the same for both colours prior to baking. I would be overjoyed if the purple boolits would shoot as they are with one coat. Will have to see how they shoot I guess.

[OS1880]

Tried the red using that now, have the yellow comes out a little thin and the color not really yellow more like mustard to me. I combined some of each and got a tan instead of orange that I was trying for, but the coverage was good.

[JBinMN]

My PC experience was with HF White. I was at HF ( 50 miles away, one way) to pick up a vibratory cleaner & saw the PCs on a shelf nearby. They had Red, yellow, White & Black. SInce I had been reading that Red wasn't working well, I thought for about 6 bucks I would try the white. If it did not work I could use it for the fishing jigs & sinkers I cast. After leaving there, I stopped to get some treat CC media for the cleaner & picked up a small jar of Airsoft pellets( off color grey/green) while I was already figuring to try PCing some boolits, and if it did not work out I would just use the PC for the fishing stuff.

Short version: I did not work well for me... And I am only going to try this one more time, then re-evaluate on whether it is worth my time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Long version:

I took the pellets , put them in a #5 recycling marked container & added some .44 mag 430gr SWC bullet to test this deal out. They were culls that I was going to return to the melt pot, but if the PC worked I would try them out in the SRH. So, I added the HF White PC powder & shook the **** out of the container for a minute or so. Opened the container & shook the contents out onto a piece of 1/4 in. hardware cloth I had cut for a screen to separate things. I could tell right off that the powder was not sticking to the bullets enough to fully coat. So, I repeated the process. Still not getting good coverage. At this point I was disappointed in this process. I had used the same amount of time to do this as tumble lubing with Alox, or the 45/45/10 I had been using so far. Not impressed...

I then decided since I was already in the middle of the process, I would give it one more try, but using a technique similar to the one I use with jigs/sinkers to try to get them coated with enough powder to bake. I added the rest of the powder to the container so there was much more powder that pellets & set a lit propane torch on it's side, so I could pass the boolits into the flame for a few seconds, then drop them into the powder paint to cover them with the powder. ( Not unlike some that I have read about here, who use an oven at 140F .
to "pre heat" their boolits before the "Shake & Bake" part.) I am just preheating with a torch for a few seconds.

{ when doing jigs, I hold the wire hook with the jig head out & pass it into the flame a couple seconds & then dip into the paint container for just a second or so , and the head is the only part in the powder then pull it out. If the jighead is not fully covered I put it in the torch flame & rotate the head to get the paint to flow around the head if I can. If not, I usually just repeat the process. then hang on a wire to either use as is, or bake to "cure" the paint even more. Add eyes with a marker sometimes & off I go... Simple as that...}

Well after dropping approx. 70 of so boolits( a pan full, I did not count them) into the powder, I used the screen to separate again & I got a mixed bag of coverage. Some coated very well/maybe too think a coat, some that seemed like maybe just the right amount, and some not quite enough & same as the "shake & bake" effort before. So I took the ones with not enough & repeated the pre heat /drop & then put them with the rest on the pan. Baked for exactly 20 minutes with the oven on 400F. Apparently either the non stick did not work or I put the wrong side up. The boolets were either not covered well enough, "maybe" covered well enough, or covered thinck with pubbles of paint on the foil. I took them out of the oven & dropped the bunch into a pail of water with cloth on the bottom to cool & then waited a while for them to cool enough to handle.

Once removed from the water, I tried to remove them from the foil... Not good... almost every one stuck to the foil & it was pretty difficult to remove the foil from the bottom. Once again, I was not impressed. But, to try to salvage I looked over each one & kept about 20-25 to just "try" to make work in reloading. The rest I put in a pile & later that day when I started casting the ended up in the little ladle pot I use for making ingots so I could skim the paint blobs off & reuse the melted lead.

That is where I have stopped. I had over a hour + in this project & I could have tumbled lubed/ pan lubed a lot of boolits in the same time it took me to PC 70 of them & only ended up with maybe 25 for the efforts. I still have not used those PC boolits yet, as I have other things to do & other ammo to reload before I try cleaning the rest of the foil off, try sizing & all that jazz. I casted about 6-700 other boolets after this effort, & only counting the lube & set time I had them all tumble lubed & set up to dry on wax paper in about the same amount of time as the PC effort.

{I took close to a dozen pics, but I have not yet figured out how to post them here from photobucket. I tried the little icon up above & the IMG-/Image in the [ ] code, but neither worked for some reason. here is a link that might allow ya to see them if ya care to do so...

PC pics test run (http://s1247.photobucket.com/user/MnSportsman_Album2/slideshow/PC%20Boolits%202017)
---------------------

Depending on whether ya read the short or the long version, here are my thoughts....

I will try this one more time, and if the results do not improve, I will not do it again , unless I have the $$ to spare to buy one of those ES sprayer dohickeys to try this. I am not inclined to spend the $$ right now on one, as I could buy other reloading stuff with the same $$ that I can certainly use without issue, rather than throwing the $$ at something I may not like nor be able to use more than once. It is not like I have a lot of other things to ES coat & the Fishing stuff process is well established, so I really would not need it for that....

In summation... will keep reading & trying to learn more, but as of right now, I am not impressed with "my" results, even though some of you are having much better results. I may try doing a couple small lots with some of my fishing jig paints to see how that works using this method, but that is one of those, " hey, I have a little time, let's give it another try things.." I have been satisfied with the tumble & pan lube process & so I will stick to that for now. So, that is my story of using a different HF paint other than the HF Red.

G'luck to the rest of ya!
:)

[OS1880]

JB : Feel the same way not spending money on a sprayer when I'm getting good results without it. What I do I use a small plastic peanut butter jar with a screw top. I add maybe 20 25 boolits depending on the caliber and a tablespoon of PC. Then I place it in my tumbler for about 10 mins. When that is done I pour the boolits into a screen sifter ($2 at WW) over a tin pie dish to reclaim any powder left. Then I place the boolits one by one on a metal screen (rain gutter screen from HD) using tweezers and into the toaster oven 350 deg. for 20 mins. When done I remove the screen using pliers and quench in cold water. Have had good results on 45 9mm 38spl and 223. I'm using the HF red.

[JBinMN]

I will try it again, for sure. But I am going to try to do a bit more research & maybe change containers.But, not going to spend any more $$. I will use what I have & see how things work out when I feel like trying again.
:)

G'luck to all!
:)

[exile]

I know this thread is about Harbor Freight powders, but I wanted to report that I have had excellent results on my first try using pricier powders and the simple shake and bake method.

My question at this point is, does anyone have a method to remove hard wax commercial lube from boolits so that they can be powder-coated? I am sold on this powder-coating method and want to make use of it with boolits I purchased previously from commercial vendors. Thanks,

exile

[daloper]

Most things have been covered but I will put in my .02 cents. I started with the Harbor freight red and it worked O.K. Tried the yellow and like people are saying, I needed two coats. I did not get the black BB's. I got some green ones from Dunhams and they did not work very well. I ordered powder and BBs from Smoke and was surprised at the difference. The paint stuck to the bullets better and I could see a difference in the coating on the BBs. If you are going to give PC a good try I would recommend getting good powder and BBs from Smoke. I use his John Deere green the red the white the blue and the clear. I was surprised at how the clear turned out. I even bought his pink to use on the wife's bullets. I would also recommend getting a convection oven. My old one would not maintain even temperature. After getting the convention oven and checking the temp with the oven thermometer it hold good around the 400 degrees when set at 375. I still lube and size , but not as much. I still have too many tubes of lube for my Star sizer.

[Tackleberry41]

I moved on from the tumble method. Broke down and bought a gun. Bought some of the other HF colors, mostly for the containers, HF gun uses those special containers for the powder, only came w 2. See if the HF colors work good out of a gun.

[Wild Bill 7]

If using HF powder the gun works best. The first HB powder I used was red. Worked great for a while. Then I couldn't get any of the colors to coat good with shake and bake. Solution, Smokes powder is the way to go for S&B. JMHO.

[bluejay75]

Another vote for red. If using a tumbler...dont overdo it. A few tablespoons will do it for a few hundred bullets. I shoot for as thin of coverage as possible.