A partnership for powdercoating.

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I have cooked up a few plates for baking.
No single one is a true universal go to solution.
The drawing has me thinking about a CPU ZIF socket.

This is the real coating game. Jigs and fixtures for baking.
We might all do well to tour various professional powder coat shops to see how they would deal with it.
 
I'm at the load pack and fire stage at the wholesale level too.
Got enough cast coated sized and stashed to load everything 4X over.
Guess it's time to sort out the stuff that worked from the concepts in progress, organize the notes and share tips and tricks.
Hopefully that effort will give others a fast track to success.
 
Probably my favorite of the whole adventure.


Got a lot of requests for that one !

For all of you bullet letter geeks, thats a :

158g PCGCLSWC

:evil:
 

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one of my favorites on my end was this one.
powdered.jpg

this is an in process pic showing one of my coating / baking fixtures.
that seems to be the unsung hero of the game, the jigs and fixtures we have to cook up.
This is just drilled 16 Ga steel with nails welded in place, but these serve the purpose quite well.
load45.jpg
 
Been following this subject here and on Cast Boolits. Got my feet wet with the "shake and bake" method this weekend. Man, to tell the truth, that method is aggravating and results are less than spectacular when it comes to loading time. "Tonging" out of the mix onto the cook tray for every single bullet leaves gaps in coverage, so two runs is neccesary to get them fully coated. Coating is lumpy,too. This brings me to a question....Maybe y'all can help with a solution.

The mold I use is a Lee, 125gr RN. Makes nice, consistant OD bullets. Push through a size die and I'm good to go. This PC adds a great deal to the OD. This messes with OAL settings. Normally I set OAL on these at 1.080" with uncoated bullets. I'm having to set OAL to near 1.045 to keep these at a proper "Plunk test" (keeping the ogive from engaging the rifling when chambering a round) depth. 1.045" is way shorter than any safe data I have access to.

The lumpyness I think can be fixed with one of those Harbour Freight powder coat guns and trial and error, but this still will yield a shorter than 1.080" OAL. I'm not comfortable with going lower than that OAL. Any of you guys run into this?
 
Tinker said:
Been following this subject here and on Cast Boolits. Got my feet wet with the "shake and bake" method this weekend. Man, to tell the truth, that method is aggravating and results are less than spectacular when it comes to loading time. "Tonging" out of the mix onto the cook tray for every single bullet leaves gaps in coverage, so two runs is neccesary to get them fully coated. Coating is lumpy,too. This brings me to a question....Maybe y'all can help with a solution.

The mold I use is a Lee, 125gr RN. Makes nice, consistant OD bullets. Push through a size die and I'm good to go. This PC adds a great deal to the OD. This messes with OAL settings. Normally I set OAL on these at 1.080" with uncoated bullets. I'm having to set OAL to near 1.045 to keep these at a proper "Plunk test" (keeping the ogive from engaging the rifling when chambering a round) depth. 1.045" is way shorter than any safe data I have access to.

The lumpyness I think can be fixed with one of those Harbour Freight powder coat guns and trial and error, but this still will yield a shorter than 1.080" OAL. I'm not comfortable with going lower than that OAL. Any of you guys run into this?
Click to expand...
I use the same mold but have not had this issue with that mold. I have used a lee 125 grain TC mold that gave me OAL grief after powder coating. I ended up at about 1.050. I just backed down to the very lightest published load data and worked up very slowly checking for pressure signs. The irony is that they ended up being the most accurate cast 9mms I have come up with to date.

On the 125 grain RN bullets, I am wondering why you are having to seat them so much deeper. I get that the OGIVE gets a bump from the powder coating and it doesn't get sized down like the rest of the bullet but the largest jump I have seen personally is about .006. On my 125 grain TC mold, it is a shorter bullet (actually intended to be a .38) so that few thousands made quite a difference. If they are bumpy, the solution might be as simple as smoothing out the process some. On my shake and bake bullets, I do an extremely light first coat and then a slightly heavier second coat and it takes care of most of the lump issues.
 
The shake and bake method let's you take it for a test drive.
If it proves itself to you, as I'm sure it will, you just get serious about it.
An air compressor and an electrostatic spray gun isn't a bad investment, and can provide service for other things around the house.
The secret is in the jigs and fixtures.
If you can work these out to where you do not have to handle anything but the coating/baking fixture, all your problems are solved.
 
If you're having to adjust the die that much, I would think you are using way too much powder.
Also, as far as the little marks from whatever you're using to "tong" them out. They really don't make any difference, except to your eyes.

Pics would help though ;)
 
I looked up that particular bullet.
That one might have some fun geometry to work with.
The spray method will add some uniformity to the coat and allow you to get closer to your oal. That rather acute angle offered by the ogive might be hard to completely overcome.
Truth be told, I don't know how thin we can go. All failures have been at ridiculous velocities no pistol could ever reach.
Your mission might be to find the minimum coat thickness.
 
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Thanks guys for the replies. That OAL of mine with these bullets is worrying me. I think I may later invest in a hollow point die and a powder coat sprayer in the near future. I really like that jig for HP's that Venom showed. That gets powder only where you really need the coating. Those pics look nice.

I'm only doing 9mm now, but I'd eventually like to get into .45ACP for home casting and range fun and leave the 9mm only for factory plated or jacketed rounds. A local company (Zero) makes nice jacketed projectiles in 9. I may even try another 9mm die after getting the PC results you guys are achieving.
 
Oh, one more thing. I agree with someone's post (buried in one of these threads, here and at Cast Boolits) that this powder coat thing will be a revolution for casting for hobbyists and shooting in general if a KISS solution is found for consistant/inexpensive PC'ing. Plus, the finished rounds just look cool.:D
 
Thank you.
I made that particular mold myself.

seems to be, cheap, easy, and effective .... pick two.

But the common theme between all methods is in the largely overlooked prep work that offers the most pain reduction.
Take your time crafting any tool you'll use more than twice.
 
AR-308 - 168gr GC red HFPC @ 2400, 32F, ~50 yds prone on asphalt & bipod. 0.766,0.651,0.681 ATC MOA. 95F, off bags @ 100, 0.609 ATC MOA. This stuff works.
 
I would like to try some powder coated bullets I shoot 44mag, 45 colt, 30-30, 243! anyone have some that I could try?
Click to expand...

There are a number of companies selling them, I've used Blue Bullets with excellent results and plan to order more. Google is your friend.
 
I love that they look like tasty gumdrops:what: but man it looks like this is a lot of trouble.

I guess it's probably as addicting as the rest of the hobby though.
 
but man it looks like this is a lot of trouble.
Click to expand...

Depends on exactly how you make your current bullets.

If you cast tumble-lubed bullets, don't size them, and just tumble lube them : this is more work.

If you cast machine lube bullets, and machine lube them through a manual lubrisizer- like a saeco, for example, this is actually ( some might/will argue this, but I'd say its less ) less work.


The nice thing about PC is that it allows you to work around things like polygonal rifling, figuring out the right hardness of lead for your application, bore diameter problems, etc.

What I can't wait to try next year is............ Well, you get to wait for next year :D
 
A New Art Form... Powder Coated Bullet Arrangements?

I was cleaning out my stash of various powder coating attempts this weekend and got bored:)

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I found something out over the weekend that may or may not be helpful to some of you. I cut a layer of aluminum window screen and put it on the bottom of my baking pan. To my surprise, the powder coating did not stick to it at all!

I originally bought the stuff to use as a strainer to allow extra powder to just roll off the bullets before I put them on to bake. I got lazy and just laid the screen out over the tray.

For those who use the shake and bake method and just dump them on the baking tray without much finesse, this seems to be the ticket. It also is reusable.
 
This is my very first and so far only cast bullet group from my brand new 30-30 encore bbl that I bought primarily to test cast.

100yds 9.3 grains of trail boss wolf LP primer sized .309" the same bullets I mentioned and pictured earlier in this thread ImageUploadedByTapatalk1414873829.288319.jpg
 
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