Well, today I received my package from Donnie with the original TruBlu that he tested.
There is a visible difference between the two, so I was hopeful.
I was very methodical and systematic in mixing up a half batch.
Got the oven going and coated 1.25 lb of bullets with 1/4 tsp of mix. Normal batch is 5 lb and 1 tsp.
Warmed them on top after air drying on the fan.
First coat maintained some blue color.
Second coat. Each row was a separate batch of 4.
For my setup, oven temp is PID controlled at 194C (381F). I started a 3 minute timer when internal bullet temp hit 180C (356F). This is borderline low and the bullets didn’t always pass wipe test.
Outdoor natural lighting
Indoor LED lighting. 9mm TC were 2 coats of what I bought from Donnie. Larger TC’s are today’s with Donnie’s original sample batch.
All in all, I can’t see much difference between the batch Donnie got in on Feb 6 and the original sample batch. The powder does have a different look, but appears to perform the same. I REALLY wanted the stuff I got today to be a rich deep blue, but since the base polymer darkens when curing, blue is difficult. One last thing I’m going to do is send Donnie some of my coated bullets for judging. If a bluer bullet is possible, I’ll road trip to Louisiana to learn how to make it.
Thanks bunches to Donnie for sending me some of his original powder to test and compare and thanks to Joe and Trevor for all of their help and comments.
This Hi-Tek is some cool stuff and I’ll be adding more colors to my inventory for different bullets. If anyone has a trick for keeping the blue bluer, please pass them along so I can try your method.