Done with the shake and bake method

[hickfu]

I started doing the shake and bake back when we all started PC'ing our bullets 8 or so years ago but I moved 3 times since so I hadnt even cast in that long. Well now I am in Oregon and it sucks to do the S&B up here with all the humidity so I started looking for my Harbor Freight PC gun I purchased right before I started moving. I also remembered that Popper used a PC gun so I looked at the pics of his bullets from years ago and decided that YUP that is what I am going to now.

So I read through threads that people drilled holes in sheet metal or wood and covered with the "NSF" so today I was bored and went to the dollar store and got some cheap cookie sheets. I went to Harbor Freight and got some Pop Rivets as well. I then laid out a grid pattern on the cookie sheet and used a screw and hammer to punch a divot into the sheet to drill (the rivets are .123 so I picked a drill bit that is .124) I drilled out the holes in the pan as well as the primer pockets of some 9mm cases that were crappy ones that I never use.

I then used the pop rivets to secure the 9mm cases to the pan
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Here are the rivets I got from HF
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So now I can powder coat my 35 Rem GC bullets without getting the GC coated as well.
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Im going to do the same thing to some 45acp cases to PC my 45-70 GC bullets
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And some 40 S&W to do 45-70 PB bullets so that a part of the tip is not coated
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KUDOS to Popper for making the best looking bullets I have seen and finally convincing me to go the HFPC method.

[bangerjim]

Even though I worked with many other fine folks on here back in 2013-14 to develop and refine the shake-n-bake method, I switched 100% to an ESPC gun several years ago for powder coating boolits and just about anything & everything that needs a hard durable paint coat and will fit in my big Oster oven! A complete world of difference in quality and ease of production.

Welcome aboard the "real PC train"!

banger

[popper]

Doc - do whatever works for you. ESPC works fine even in humidity but I've changed to shake & bake now. Still get good results. I even gave up on HiTek - it works just fine when you get it right. Shake & bake just so easy once you figure it out. Older I get, easier I want it.
Thanks for the allocade about my cast but you didn't see the ones when I was learning! Or my targets!

[hickfu]

I want bullets that look like this!!! you cant get this with shake and bake

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[ironbrew]

You guys... I am just getting the fixings for powder coating and you guys go and up the ante...

I have access to the eastwood stuff up here through KMS tools. We don't get harbor freight, unfortuneatly. I'll start out slow and cheap and work my way up. I'll be watching how you set up for gun coating though.

BTW - we can get Princess Auto up here. I haven't heard how the quality compares.

[popper]

268301 Pretty close? He shoots good too.

[bangerjim]

You guys... I am just getting the fixings for powder coating and you guys go and up the ante...

I have access to the eastwood stuff up here through KMS tools. We don't get harbor freight, unfortuneatly. I'll start out slow and cheap and work my way up. I'll be watching how you set up for gun coating though.

BTW - we can get Princess Auto up here. I haven't heard how the quality compares.

Don't let our talk of ESPC throw you off you path to coating! Do what you can and need with what you have. Shake-n-bake done properly turns out some really nice boolits. Remember, we are not is a photo-modeling contest here. I have shot some really ugly coated boolits with perfect success. And they all still go SPLAT on the other end! [smilie=w: No matter how smooth and shiny they are!

banger

[dverna]

Echo what bangerjim posted.

Looks are secondary to performance and ease of use if you are a shooter. A great looking bullet that does not perform is only good for pictures.

I will NEVER stand bullets up to coat them because I am lazy plus I know I will spill them moving in/out of an oven. But if it works for you than is all that matters.

[fredj338]

It seems like a lot of work & waste, just buy better powder than HF??

[bangerjim]

It seems like a lot of work & waste, just buy better powder than HF??

These days, I now use HF, Smoke's, PBTP, Eastman, and other powders I can find all the time. With ESPC, you can use ANY powder because ALL powders were engineered to be applied with an ESPC gun, not in a plastic tub. Makes no difference with 40+KV of constant electrostatic charge behind the powder! It all sticks. Perfectly. Every time. Rain or shine. Regardless of the phase of the moon or how you hold your mouth.

banger :2gunsfiring_v1:

[FLINTNFIRE]

Funny my powder coating using shake and bake with bbs works here in washington , do use better powders that are known to work , I have no need to make special trays and or worry about phases of the moon or any other arcane beliefs , I do stand them up and put as many into oven at a time as I can when coating as I want to get done with that end of it , spraying is fine with some and others of us have no want or need to , I try to keep all my casting and coating activity in a fairly small space .

Good luck on your coatings , and I understand with the gas check bases what you are doing and the special trays and that does look like a good set up .

[Txcowboy52]

I’ve been powder coating for several years now, shake and bake works well for me . Shake them up pour into a wire mesh basket and into the oven . Never had one that didn’t pass the hammer and anvil test .

[Conditor22]

You need to figure the extra mess and powder you waste using a an ESPC gun compared to ASBBDT.

Not knocking them I do have a HF and Eastwood 2 stage gun.

[Bad Ass Wallace]

Talking with a friend today about powder coating, "I tried that and it didn't work" he said.

"I still have 4 packets of powder from 10 years ago. would you like it?"

Red, blue, yellow and black, tried a batch and they bake perfectly.

Much like a lot of my casting gear, gents try a new idea without success and just give up.

https://i.imgur.com/02GXeqo.jpg

[rototerrier]

I want bullets that look like this!!! you cant get this with shake and bake

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I'm getting pretty darn close with shake and bake!

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[hickfu]

Ok, let me change my original statement "Im done S&B on rifle bullets" I dont think it really matters on pistol bullets because im only firing them out to maybe 25 yards, Rifle bullets go out a couple hundred yards and I dont like seeing powder built up on one side or filling up the crimp groove. a slight wobble can through a bullet way off.

I have only been using powders from PBTP, not HF powders and havent been able to get good coverage on the first go so I always have to do a 2nd coat no matter the color.

I can reclaim the powder that doesnt stick to the bullets because I wouldnt put my PC tray into the oven, I will be taking the bullets off and putting them on a different tray with some smooth tweezers so no wasting powder.. Yes it will be much slower but im disabled and have the time and shaking stuff around hurts so there is a plus to spraying.

Ive had the PC gun in a box for 8 or so years now so I might as well use it.

[gnappi]

That rig for GC's is just so clever. Wow!

[Dragonheart]

I won't take sides because on rifle bullets I do Both! The first coat is sprayed with the shank of the gas check stuck into a drilled and reamed pan that holds the shank and keeps it clean, so checks are easy to install. I do a partial cure on the first coat then I do a shake and bake clear coat over the entire bullet, thereby increasing the thickness of the jacket and welding the check in place. After all the best and most accurate at distance full power rifle bullets I have ever seen was made by "Bama" and he coats the entire bullet.

The spraying is an old photo I now spray indoors in a spray booth using an Eastwood gun. The old HF gun still works, but I don't have a lot bottles for it. The Eastwood bottles are cheap so I can have many colors available.

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[white eagle]

I use the SB method for all my boolits
I have never done gas checked boolits any different from
non gas checked boolits
never had issues installing checks

[Dragonheart]

I use the SB method for all my boolits
I have never done gas checked boolits any different from
non gas checked boolits
never had issues installing checks

When the a GC shank of a bullet is coated, getting the check on or perfectly set is problematic. A GC that is not set perpendicular and with a perfectly flat base is useless from an accuracy standpoint.

[hickfu]

OK, I tried again today with the S&B on some 45acp bullets and with the ASBB's it was sucking big time so I took them out. I them put 1.5 teaspoons of blue powder in a cool whip container and heated 75 45acp bullets to 140 degrees for 4 to 5 minutes, dumped them in and shook and spun for about a minute. Here are the bullets.....

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Here are some pics of what I used to get S&B PCing in Ojai Ca. where it is not so humid..
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Do the ASBB's go bad over time? Mine are still from 2011 or 2012 whenever I started with powder coating.

[Dragonheart]

OK, I tried again today with the S&B on some 45acp bullets and with the ASBB's it was sucking big time so I took them out. I them put 1.5 teaspoons of blue powder in a cool whip container and heated 75 45acp bullets to 140 degrees for 4 to 5 minutes, dumped them in and shoot and spun for about a minute. Here are the bullets.....

268556

Here are some pics of what I used to get S&B PCing in Ojai Ca. where it is not so humid..
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268559

Do the ASBB's go bad over time? Mine are still from 2011 or 2012 whenever I started with powder coating.

If in doubt the BB's can be washed, but I think the real answer is you are fighting a moisture problem. The problem could be with moisture in your powder or in the air, but the preheat appears to be overcoming it. It looks like the coating is adequate other than a lot of bare spots or it is just the photo lighting. Bare spots typically occur when the substrate is contaminated, the surface touches something like the dump method instead if standing bullets on their base. At any rate I would say you are close.

[hickfu]

They are coated pretty good, its the lighting making them appear in coated. I keep the powder double zip lock bagged and its perfectly dry. Its humid here and I may have touched the bullets with my hands so from now on I will wear gloves when inspecting them.

[Bad Ass Wallace]

It is very interesting, I returned some rejects to the lead pot yesterday and noted that the coated boolits did not fully melt in the pot of lead until I fluxed and set fire to the flux. I can only conclude that it's flame point is a little above the melting point of lead.

Given this, a plain based cast boolit should well without a gas check.

[cstrickland]

I want bullets that look like this!!! you cant get this with shake and bake

268289

That is exactly why I ESPC bullets . I like the super clean smooth look of it . Does it benifit in my pistol ?? I wouldn’t have to say hell no, but the smoothness does allow me some lead way in COAL on some certain bullet profiles
I have tried many times and different processes of the shake and bake , and I have never come close to the even coverage that I get form the ESPC. Some get a little closer than I have , but I have seen none that get that level of smoothness ! Again it doesn’t effect pistol or my rifle . I get 1-1/2 -2 MOA with my 300 blk with shake and bake , and that is more than GTG for 3 gun

[fredj338]

The question is does the waste of powder & time of ESPC worth super clean finish? For me that is no.

[Drm50]

I’m still conventional lube/sizing. Question: it seems a lot of PC is wasted on non bearing boolit surfaces. Is this just done to save time. Seems on some booklist you are using twice the PC that is actually needed. Am I missing something?

[fredj338]

I’m still conventional lube/sizing. Question: it seems a lot of PC is wasted on non bearing boolit surfaces. Is this just done to save time. Seems on some booklist you are using twice the PC that is actually needed. Am I missing something?

For me yes, saves time. Your really couldnt shake & bake just the bearing surface. You could setup a jig of some sort & spray just the bearing surface but why? I can do about 300 9mm bullets with 1tsp of powder shake & bake, pretty economical.

[marek313]

If you take your time shake and bake works just fine. I do stand them all up on the baking tray and give them little extra dusting before they go in but I think they look just fine. Having good quality PC which is stored dry makes more of a difference then the application mode if you ask me.
268719

[BC17A]

Doc, I've been doing almost the same but I use 22lr cases instead. I have several pans that hold 54 boolits for the toaster oven and also larger ones that hold 125 for my high production days using the full-size oven. I use 22's so the PC can coat completely around the base. I coat the boolits with checks the same way which makes them even more secure to the shank. I was doing ES powder-coating long before I started casting so for me it just made sense to spray instead of using the tub method.


268724

[Dragonheart]

They are coated pretty good, its the lighting making them appear in coated. I keep the powder double zip lock bagged and its perfectly dry. Its humid here and I may have touched the bullets with my hands so from now on I will wear gloves when inspecting them.

I store my powder in sealed glass jars in the garage freezer. It appears this extends the life of the powder, for how long I don't know, but I recently cleaned out some Prismatic Powder dating back to 2012 and it sprayed like new.

I try not to handle my bullets with bare hands, but I won't say, I never. The most likely way for bullets to become contaminated is doing a water drop. i learned this early on the hard way, and now I only air cool.

A water drop after coating is not a problem, but I usually do so many bullets at a time I just let the oven cool down and I wouldn't go to any extra effort to increase the hardness on handgun bullets anyway.

[Dragonheart]

I won't argue the point that spraying produces a more even PC, but I do a lot of handgun bullets and prefer shake & bake. I think it just gets down to what you like.

Here for example is in excess of 600 bullets on a single tray and 4 trays go into my Hamilton Beach toaster oven in a single cook. The other tray in the second photo holds over 1000 bullets and 5 trays go into my big oven, all done with shake & bake.

268726268727

[cstrickland]

I won't argue the point that spraying produces a more even PC, but I do a lot of handgun bullets and prefer shake & bake. I think it just gets down to what you like.

Here for example is in excess of 600 bullets on a single tray and 4 trays go into my Hamilton Beach toaster oven in a single cook. The other tray in the second photo holds over 1000 bullets and 5 trays go into my big oven, all done with shake & bake.

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can you tell me what you are shaking those in, and how you are setting them on the tray ?

I use to shake but really like the ESPC I set mine up by hand then spray and into the oven. I do need to leave more space, but have a few trays that hold over 500 each

[cstrickland]

I started doing the shake and bake back when we all started PC'ing our bullets 8 or so years ago but I moved 3 times since so I hadnt even cast in that long. Well now I am in Oregon and it sucks to do the S&B up here with all the humidity so I started looking for my Harbor Freight PC gun I purchased right before I started moving. I also remembered that Popper used a PC gun so I looked at the pics of his bullets from years ago and decided that YUP that is what I am going to now.

So I read through threads that people drilled holes in sheet metal or wood and covered with the "NSF" so today I was bored and went to the dollar store and got some cheap cookie sheets. I went to Harbor Freight and got some Pop Rivets as well. I then laid out a grid pattern on the cookie sheet and used a screw and hammer to punch a divot into the sheet to drill (the rivets are .123 so I picked a drill bit that is .124) I drilled out the holes in the pan as well as the primer pockets of some 9mm cases that were crappy ones that I never use.

I then used the pop rivets to secure the 9mm cases to the pan
268266
268267

Here are the rivets I got from HF
268268
268269

So now I can powder coat my 35 Rem GC bullets without getting the GC coated as well.
268270

Im going to do the same thing to some 45acp cases to PC my 45-70 GC bullets
268271

And some 40 S&W to do 45-70 PB bullets so that a part of the tip is not coated
268272

KUDOS to Popper for making the best looking bullets I have seen and finally convincing me to go the HFPC method.

Doc how are you cleaning your pan and brass after coating ? I have long wanted to do something similar for 9mm with a smaller case maybe 25 cal. I shoot lee 356-120TC and thought about making a tray like yours and put my bullets nose down, so there will be a small amount of the tip bare . but it will make it easier to not get shadowing on my bases

[Dragonheart]

can you tell me what you are shaking those in, and how you are setting them on the tray ?

I use to shake but really like the ESPC I set mine up by hand then spray and into the oven. I do need to leave more space, but have a few trays that hold over 500 each

I tumble coat about 6-1/2 pounds of bullets at a time in my homemade vibrator tumbler. The off the shelf tumblers are too aggressive, so I used the the base of a couple of small tumblers, no longer needed. I removed the bowl and replace it with a 5 gallon bucket that is held in place with a 1/4"-20 screw and two all thread side straps affixed to a plywood base. Using the tension on the side straps I can adjust the amount of vibration. The bucket also make it very easy if I choose to preheat.

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When done I dump the lot into a plastic dishpan and pick up the bullets using self locking tweezers. They are a lot faster as I can grab and rotate as needed since the bullet is locked in the jaws of the tweezers. Stainless bakers cooling rack, available in different grid sizes, is set on a silicone cooking mat, allowing me to place a maxium number of bullets on a tray by spacing the bullets and holding them upright. Once the loaded tray is on an oven rack I lift the grid up and off. Loading trays is the slowest part of the operation, but I prefer to maintain quality of a bullet cooked on its base.

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For small batches 2K and under I use one of my Hamilton Beach Countertop convection ovens.

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For larger batches 5K+ I use my converted 30" PID controlled oven:

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Once coated I dump the cooled bullets into a commercial plastic food service pan and run them through my homebuilt pneumatic sizer. My steady sizing pace is about 35 bullets a minute.

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That's about all there is to it.

[elmacgyver0]

Ahh, a fellow Tinkerdink!

[Dragonheart]

Ahh, a fellow Tinkerdink!

Yeah, but what is an Industrial Engineering major that spent a lifetime in Construction industry supposed to do when he retires?

[Oilcan Harry]

Dragon............... That a really well built numatic sizer, I would like to build one like that too and how does that yellow feeder tube work..?? I think it's a very solid design and I just love the sound of an air cylinder working...

[Conditor22]

You slide a boolit down that yellow feeder tube when the ram in down, when the ram goes up the boolit drops into the sizing die so next time the ram comes down it sizes that boolit and you drop another boolit down the tub.

the tube keeps your fingers away from the hydraulic ram :)

some people have a tray they dump boolits in at the top of the tube and slide boolits into the tub as needed.

th4e feeder tube is also used with upside down presses

[Dragonheart]

Dragon............... That a really well built numatic sizer, I would like to build one like that too and how does that yellow feeder tube work..?? I think it's a very solid design and I just love the sound of an air cylinder working...

It bullet feeder is actually a simple design. The first one I was when I built "Ram Chucker"a reversed a RCBS Rock Chucker press with a 2-1/2" cylinder to operate the press. I posted a video a number of years ago, some may remember back then, but when Google took over YouTube all the old videos got deleted and I just never got around to re-post.

At first I fed the bullets in by hand, but soon realized that was an accident waiting that had already found a place to happen, so I needed a feeder to keep the hands out of the way of the ram and hopefully speed up the operation. I had built "Ram Buster" a pneumatic multi-tube case feeder to Bulge Bust (take out the bulge that occurs near the case rim where the sizing die doesn't reach) 9mm & 45ACP cases, but this was more complicated and I didn't have the time to spend at that time building one for bullets.

I had noticed that a bullet coming out of a tube set just right would drop into the push through sizing die, ready to be pushed through. So my first feeder was simply supporting the tube, I used an angle welding magnet with a short section of pvc pipe glued to the magnet for support. This idea worked, but it was problematic as the bullet didn't always flip just right and some bullet designs worked better than others. Then I found if I set the bullet end of the tube directly against a longer push rod with the rod was in the down position, the rod itself acted as a stop for the bullet and the operation worked every time.

Ram Chucker worked great but, I soon realized for a simple up & down operation just a supported pneumatic cylinder would suffice, so I built "Ram Sizer" the one in the photo using a more powerful 3-1/2", 4" stroke cylinder One of the problems with my permanent magnet feeder was my bumping and knocking it out of place. So for Ram Sizer and I wanted a better solution, but still wasn't ready to build a more complicated feeder. I tried electromagnets, which most definitely did work, but they needed constant power. I finally decided on a switchable magnet as I already had this yellow welding magnet I had purchased from Amazon, "Strong Hand Tools, Heavy Duty, Adjust-O Magnet Square, On/Off Switches, Pull Force: 65 lbs". The magnet attaches to the steel base plate in any position with a flip of the switch. Attached to the 45 degree side of the magnet and held in place by the magnet'












































































s pull is a lipped metal plate welded to a short section of square tubing. The die end is cut at a 45 degree angle and the top feeder end is cut so it creates a small trough. The magnet holds firm, and it can be removed when I want to use it for its intended purpose.

The speed of the operation is determined by your dexterity as to how fast you can pick up and drop bullets in a tube while the other hand operates the sizer. I use a 3 position toggle type pneumatic switch as you can see; flip to one side the ram goes down, flip to the other side the ram goes up, center position is neutral. Even with my old arthritic hands I can hold a steady pace of sizing 35 bullets a minute for several minutes. I haven't tried to improve on this as it already is capable of sizing more bullets than I need. If you are going to build one I will be happy to provide any information you wish.