simple Hi-Tek coating

[Ausglock]

Remember... this is water thin. it is better to put on too little than too much. you can always throw on a 3rd coat if needed.

I only cook on the middle shelf as the top and bottom heat elements are then equal distance from the bullets.
5-1-7 mix
Or 5-1-10 if you want colour down in the lube groove. Use a bit more at this mix ratio to swirl.

[leadman]

Sounds like the coating might not have been dried long enough. If the top surface of the coating is dry but the rest is still wet it will outgas and mess up the surface. Makes it look like it was boiled. If it is still sticky try removing it with acetone. If it won't come off bake it some more.
These boolits will still shoot fine, just look nasty. Yes, I did the same thing! LOL

[Jumbopanda]

Panda,

Those are some mighty fine looking boolits you got there.
What are you going to use them in?


G

300 Blackout subsonic loads

[Ausglock]

Sweet looking little round. Great looking bullets.

Got the Lee 358 158gr RNF mold yesterday. going to cast some, coat some and size down to .356 and try these in the 357Sig.

[BBQJOE]

After a little over a week using hi-tek here are a few observations
GET AN OVEN THERMOMETER! These el-cheapo toaster ovens are all over the place temp wise. I keep one on the tray while baking, and I don't start timing it until the oven reaches 350°. Also a convection oven is best to keep the heat even.
Bullets like .38 and 9mm are easier to do than big bulky ones like 240 wad cutters. I had much better luck doing the 240's in a smaller tub like a margarine tub.
As Trevor said, 1 rack, in the middle.
Make sure that the bullets are completely dry before baking, they may feel dry, but quite often aren't. Use a fan. I've been using a fan for about 10 minutes, if the oven is just a little warm yet from a previous batch, I'll pop the bullets in for 5 minutes, then pull them back out while starting the oven again.
5-1-7 Gives better results than 5-1-5
SHAKE THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THE COLOR!
Put a few bullets in the can, and SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE! When you think you are done shaking, shake some more.

DON'T GET IN A RUSH!

I've had excellent results in 9mm with this. I was having awful results with .44 with tumble lubing. I think I must have scrubbed 10 or 11 pounds of lead out of my S&W 629 today.
I then ran some 240's through it using hi-tek, and all was well.
Anyone who's sitting on the fence is just wasting their time with anything else.
Get a half liter and try it! A half liter will easily coat 12,000 bullets.

Take all your beeswax and paraffin, and give it to the kids to make candles!

[gunoil]

What he⬆ said. Alox can flux your lead pot. Dont get in the alox smoke, it says cancer on the bottle. Alox smells like sompins z$$. eeeeeeh.

[kdiver58]

I purchased 1/2 liter of the green and 1/2 liter of the red/bronze to share with a friend of mine. I'm hoping he will post his results and will not steal his thunder. He did all of the work. He put together an acid test. The results were over the top good. I'm sold.

Below is his post. I spent a lot of time looking down the bore of the scoped 44 . I went land by land and groove by groove . I drew pictures of what I saw and the locations of the old fouling. When he got done the bore was squeaky clean. The concussive force of the loads could be felt in the bench and the resulting fireball was impressive. If anything was going to vaporize the back of the bullet and deposit in the bore this would have. These boolits were BERM RANGE lead. We had to leave and meet up with other people so the only thing we didn't do was tunnel in the berm and find one of the boolits.

[jmoore]

Howdy! Thanks to y'all's inputs a friend and I decided to give this coating a try. The first attempt resulted in way too much coating on the test 429421 boolits (discovered after reading Trevor's posts back on roughly page 20 of this thread), probably 0.0015" per side, some minor chipping after sizing to 0.432" and a less than smooth appearance on the unsized areas.:

Before sizing. Lower boolit has one "too heavy" coat, the upper, two.



So what to do as a first test? Load up some .44 Magnum rounds with a maximum charge of 2400 and see what happens! No sense wasting time up close, why not just let fly at 50 yards (off a rest)?

Target is on the frame just to the right of the walkway.

Scope zero wasn't far off, but it took a little time for the revolver to settle down (started with a previously fouled bore). But after getting somewhat on the 2" square, several five shot groups were fired out of the circa 1989 S&W 629.


First five after getting basic zero at 50 yards

Here's the target after 20 rounds!:




Oh, what's fairly amazing is that the coating removed the old fouling and a bit of leading from "old style" rounds fired previously. At the end, the bore was quite shiny, even with fairly soft bullets driven as fast as ~20 grains of 2400 would drive them.

Here's an unrested group shot by my friend at 25 yards. It's his first time shooting this revolver to boot. (Feel free to comment on the "festivities" kdiver58!):


Thanks again, and I hope this first post on the forum is at least a little useful for some fence sitters. If the first attempt was this good, imperfections and all, I can't wait to see how it goes when we get the process down pat...

[seedeeze]

Can one mix colors? Say i want to mix gold with the copper to get something different. I think it would be okay but better to a be sure.

[gunoil]

Great post jmoore, thanks! I have set up for 44 magnum with dies and such, just need money for pistol. Keep posting and give us tips and pics. Maybe how your oven is set up.

[HI-TEK]

Can one mix colors? Say i want to mix gold with the copper to get something different. I think it would be okay but better to a be sure.

Hi,
Thanks for your post.
Folk here have mixed colours for years, to get that "special" colour of effect.
Some coat with one thin colour, then recoat with another colour. It all works.
Secret is use thinned dilute coatings, that way you use minimum amount of coating and with multiple coats you cover the lead any way and with adequate film.
Just make sure that it is well baked between each coat.
All should be well.
Having a reliable thermometer is a very good idea as you need temperatures to be correct when baking.

[jmoore]

Great post jmoore, thanks! I have set up for 44 magnum with dies and such, just need money for pistol. Keep posting and give us tips and pics. Maybe how your oven is set up.

After reading of the oven dramas in this thread i went and spent the extra $30 or so and got the $85 Oster oven with the digital display at Target. (Kind of a creepy place for one that rarely shops there, or is it just me?)

http://www.target.com/p/oster-digita...onvection+oven

It heats up quickly and the fan seems to keep the temp fairly uniform across the rack. (As observed by watching boolits cook.)

I think one secret to getting the .44 to shoot is ensuring the expander is sized to the bullet diameter. Most expander plugs run ~0.426" dia. Fine for jacketed bullets, but wretched for anything but the hardest cast boolits!
The HI TEK coating will help I think in getting those revolvers with 0.432"+ cylinder throats to shoot at maximum potential, particularly with the red copper, etc. formulations. My intent is to work up a good IHMSA Field Pistol load for some .44s. Velocities won't be all that high, but the last targets shot are at 100 yards, so accuracy needs to be good through the entire match! That's been the challenge to date with cast boolits: developing a load that shoots extremely well even after a long string of fire. I quit shooting IHMSA for about ten years and have just jumped back in a few months ago. Have learned more in the past 3 months than i did in 3-4 years of previous wranglings in the largely "pre-interwebs" days. But aside from this forum, it's been mostly a hard look at the equipment and doing lots of measuring.

[gunoil]

yea, lite loads for 100 yrd. See if donnie will throw ya a bone and answer some ?'s. After all, his brother is jerry miculek. Or if ya aint the phone type, just email.

[Just Call Me...G]

300 Blackout subsonic loads

That is the Hi-Tek 'gold' correct?
2 coatings of the 10ml, correct?

Whose boolit mold?...looks like the NOE 311365

Are you planning on launching said projectile through a suppressor?
Looks excellent, BTW


G

[Love Life]

AHHHH!! You're killing me smalls (directed at everybody already enjoying the HI-TEK)!! I have my red copper sitting in the house and I will be running my first batch on Sunday.

I'll be coating the NOE 454-230-RN H&G clone, and about 20 lbs of 358429 boolits.

[prickett]

Are any colors harder or easier to coat with than other colors?

[gunoil]

What prickett said⬆ ... Wait til "nano technology" gets ingrained into HTS.

[kweidner]

Are any colors harder or easier to coat with than other colors?

The gold is easier to read as far as too much time in the oven than the black. I was having problems with the black at first as I was using too much soak time. Becasu it was black you can't get a very good read if you are approaching too much time heat etc. Perfected timing watching the gold. It turns chocolate if baked too much. Took what I learned and applied it to the black and all is well.

[Ausglock]

There is some amazing results here. You blokes are doing bloody great.
I did some 230gr RN 45 bullets with red/copper first and then the green second coat. this gave a Camo coloured bullet.

I like coating with the Rose red. it is a very good colour and easy to coat with. The new Gold is also good, but needs to be shaken and added instantly to the bucket of bullets. The fire engine red is getting tested tomorrow. I'm waiting for the sky blue to arrive so I can coat some and post a few photos.
I had a play with some black powder coat powder and acetone this arvo...What a blood nightmare!!!! doesn't mix. clumps together and clumps on the bullets, sticks to the drying trays and leaves tray marks on the bullets. After cooking, the bloody coating (if you can call it that) is soft.

I gave it away as a bad joke. If people want to play Mad scientist with powder coating, then bloody good luck to them.

I will be sticking to the HTS.

After-all we are here to cast, lube and fire bullets for fun. Not pretend to be a chemical engineer.

[redrockant]

Todays colours