Hmmm, I don't know if hardening/quenching would help or hurt. Seems like a harder boolit would make the boolit harder to compress into the grooves, and make the coating come off easier. But then again, rifle casters use some hard alloys. I don't know, you are plowing new ground my friend, keep us posted.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Is anyone getting decent rifle accuracy from their coated either powder coat or epoxy? I've not been able to get anything close to acceptable in a group powder coated or epoxy.
It's been done before by major manufacturers and they dropped it. It is now in the hand of us plinkers!
And the military is going with "green" ammo anyway to eliminate that dangerous lead from contaminating our enemy's lands! Solid copper bullits? No spead or kill power.
Environmentalists.............can't live with 'em.........and they run too fast to hit 'em!
bangerjim
I'd be curious what your definition is of "acceptable accuracy". I still haven't bought a rifle mould yet, so I am just kinda talking out of my rear end.
My guess is that if you get the powder coat uneven, it's like having a tire out of balance on your car, or clothes washing machine with an unbalanced load....That bullet is trying to spin...to gyroscopically stabilize, but instead it is going THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
So it isn't very aerodynamic with that nose wobbling all over the place.
But like I said, I don't have any rifle moulds yet, and actually haven't even loaded up and shot any of my powder coated boolits yet. So I'd gladly defer to folks who have more hands on experience.
Depends on what you consider good rifle accuracy. In comparison to a standard cast and lubed boolit, or jacketed? Generally I get better accuracy out of cast in my 300 Blackout with traditional lube, so I was curious as well. In my comparison last week I tried a 125 Sierra prohunter bullet, against my powder coated 125 grain hollowpoint 311410 boolit, and the same mold with a few grains more with the shallow H/P pin. The 125 cast did as well as jacketed, and the 128's with the shorter H/P did better. Now this was with a starting load, and slightly less than Hodgdens starting load was for a 125 grain bullet, so there is a ton of wiggle room for improvement. Without a doubt with this load, and the same boolit in my 54R I can get the accuracy of a non-premium jacketed bullet, and most likely better. If I were to bet on it I would say you could, with a lot of work, get accuracy of a premium jacketed bullet. But, to be honest how accurate do you need your boolit to be? I can hit 4 inch clays at 100 yards right now with my starting load with boring accuracy, and knock the centers out in most cases. Can I make it better, you bet! Do I need to? Well, in 300 Blackout, or a 13 grain load of red dot in the 54R I am as accurate as I need to be out to 200 yards for any game I might want to take. That is about the effective max distance to kill small to coyote size game with this boolit anyway. Try it, and compare for yourself. If it doesn't work for you what have you lost? An hour of your life enjoying something that is fun, and challenging?
This is music to my ears. What powder? I have Lil Gun, H110, and 4227. After looking at Hodgdens data, looks like 16 gr would be a good starting point with all 3 of these powders. I have that same 311410 mold and just picked up a PC gun at Harbor Freight. Coated some during the weekend and hope to get some loaded and tested this week. The coating seems to be very durable.
Very pretty Mike. I want a blackout barrel, dies and molds so bad I can taste it. What mold is that?
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984
I still get a little lead at the end of the barrel, 2" or so, but it doesn't seem to be effecting the accuracy as bad. Dropped the temp back to 400* and dropped them in water right out of the oven. I'm going to try to do some for my 44 and see how they work since I push it just as hard. I'm waiting on a new handle for my 4500 before I can do anything else.
Rich
Sunday I went to HF and got the PC gun and the red, white, and yellow-orange powders. Monday I tried it out. I had planned to cook them in my bbq grill but saw that it might blow up. I used a Rival electric frying pan with lid I got at WM for making Recluse lube, its thermostat goes to 400 but it only made it to 350. Maybe that's hot enough, don't know, so I successfully fooled it by placing a small fan pointed right at the thermostat and it got up to 400 and stayed there.
Gotta say, it was a pita but it was my first go. The first shot, about 20 boolits, were all sitting on regular aluminum foil. They were very hard to pull off and most wound up with unintended aluminum bases. I took advice from 2 earlier posters and used non-stick foil and sat the next batch on hex nuts. Much better.
Last edited by el34; 09-03-2013 at 11:04 PM.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H. L. Menchen
Only one way to find out now. Down the barrel they go! Look good.
Rich
I started with 17.2 grains H110, CCI 450 mag primer, loaded to 1.905" OAL. That was LC converted brass, not factory. The alloy was straight air cooled w/w. Gas checks were hornady, and I sized to .310. Today I loaded the same but .311, and also bumped the powder to 17.7 to see where I am at with the 125's. I think I got a better burn with the 128's or short pins so loading a little more powder may help. I will find out tomorrow.
It is an awesome boolit for a great caliber! Great job on the jig, and the coating! I think you will like the results. Jugs pop great with this one.
Last edited by xacex; 09-04-2013 at 12:40 AM.
The red color makes 'em go faster (wink, wink)
Thanks xacex for the load details. I think I will try the 1.905 OAL and start with 17 gr and go up from there. I will probably focus more on the Lil Gun, I stocked up on it to feed the hungry Beowulf.
My jig is just a quickie that I put together for testing. Just screwed a piece of roof flashing to a scrap piece of OSB wall board and shot about 50 2" finish nails through the back side. Spent about 5 minutes putting it together.
I made another jig, using a piece of 16 gauge steel plate and tacked some larger nails (6 rows of 12=72) to it with my wire welder. It took a little more time, maybe 30 or 40 minutes. I used this one for 44's
Has anybody noticed a considerable difference in toughness between the HF powders and other brands? I use the Eastwood powder because I got it in the kit, but wonder if it is going to withstand the pressures of the 454.
Thanks.
Rich
Another day, another try. My best wasn't with me today. tried the increase of powder, and it did not make a difference. All groups were horrible with the Blackout. Best I could do today was 6 inches at 100 yards. Still good enough for clays at 100 yards, but the targets I was using just had dots so I was not able to use the lines to get the target acquisition I am used to. The Beowulf did better than that today. On a better note, I was able to keep it good with the G30 with PC Mihec 200 grain 45 acp. I actually hit a clay out at 50 yards with it, and almost all were on a plate out to that distance. I had a few strange flyers that were way off. Like 3 feet!
You are getting far better results with your rifle ammo than I have so far. But as for your pistol ammo, the next time you are out and you see a three foot crazy off taget stop and pull the barrel and check for heavy leading. I bet you just had a coating fail on either the very last or next to last and then the next good one is cleaning the lead out the bore for you correcting the problem. Are you using a stock Glock barrel? Maybe the polygonal rifling is letting the coating slide through instead of gripping it enough. Just thinking.
It is a stock Glock barrel. This time out I gave it a fresh cleaning so I could tell if there was coating failure. I will pull it today and see if there is an issue that I was not having with the 1911 vs polygonal in the Glock. The 1911 did the same thing I noticed.
Funny you mention it, but all of my flyers were up, and to the right, or just to the right. I haven't water dropped yet, but I may give that a shot. I know these hollow points open real nice with this soft, annealed lead. On paper these look great at 21 feet with one flyer opening the group every 5 rounds, but at 50 yards the problem is very apparent. My thought is that it is a base that is not perfect from the sprue cut, or there is a void. I don't use a PID or anything to keep my pot consistent, so I assumed that the annealing would even out any of the faults from casting temperature. Apparently not. I hate the idea of having to inspect, and weight each one again after PC, but I may need to to catch this.
Just cleaned my barrel. It was just burnt powder except for a small amount of PC residue at the throat in the lower left corner. The rest of the barrel was perfect. This is with the H/F flat black. I bet if I just did a mild tumble after PC with a tiny amount of JPW it wouldn't be there.
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |