Shooterbob
Member
Phill how many coats of hitek do you apply to your bullets? I have only powder coat and traditional lubed. I was thinking of trying hitek.
NOE Cast Bullets in Henry .44 Mag Rifles
- Thread starter Bearded Phil
- Start date
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Bearded Phil
Member
A lot of guys say 2 coats is fine for them but I like to do 3 total.
3 for me gives the most uniform total coverage and helps minimize any big "touch" marks, which are spots where the coating might stick to another bullet next to it and then leave a bare spot when you separate them. That can happen if you have a lot of smaller bullets in a tray and they roll together.
I find it helps to keep them separated in the tray as much as possible and check for any that might be stuck while they're still hot out of the oven and separate them with a bamboo skewer. Definitely make sure none are stuck from touching before the final coat's quench or the rapid cooling will really make a bad touch mark. I always dunk my bullets into a bowl of cool water with a colander in it. Not so much as to harden them, because hitek baking isn't hot and long enough generally to get hardening results, but just to make the bullets cool enough to handle quickly. Just toss them in, strain them the colander, dry on a towel in my casting shop and they can be canned up for sizing later.
I wrapped up finishing the last coat and sizing these Saturday. They're ready to roll as soon as I get the remaining stuff I need.
I will say I really like Hitek coating, but there's a bit of a learning curve. And the right equipment makes all the difference.
Coatings need to be cured at 385-400F for at least 10 minutes depending on the temp fluctuation. When I first started with a standard analogue thermometer in my toaster oven I had a rough time, but make some serviceable coated bullets.
Before this year's casting I decided to modify my toaster oven and build a PID control box which makes this a 100 times easier when it comes to baking.
The supplies aren't crazy expensive to build your own PID, but having to get more than you need or a special tool can raise the cost. I think I spent $350 or so to build mine, but part of that was a set of wire strippers that can do 24GA solid wire, a 25lf spool of Type K thermocouple wire which was the smallest spool available from the place I bought a nice thermocouple probe and accessories from (at $1/ft it wasn't terrible still, but I have way more than I ever need), and box of 1/2" ceramic wool, a 2'x5' piece I think? I didn't need that much to insulate my oven but it was the smallest size I could get.
You can buy premade PID boxes for about $100. Just depends on what you want as far as functionality. I wanted to be able to disconnect my thermocouple quickly and take my PID box inside for the summer so I got supplies to make a jumper with a couple of panel jacks and male mini connectors.
Re-wiring a toaster oven to have direct power from the main cord (so the PID can control how much power goes through and how hot the oven gets) isn't very hard, especially if you start with an analogue controlled one, there isn't much to worry about when you strip out all the stuff that isn't needed.
But with this set up I put a 3lb tray of bullets in there after pre-heating the oven, take a seat and keep and eye on the PID for the temp to raise. Once it gets to 196C (right around 385F) I start an 11 minute timer. As the PID corrects for temp it will get up to maybe 420F for 25-30 seconds before it settles to 201.6C (about 395F) for the remaining time, and typically stays +/- 1 degree C.
After the time is up, take them out and air cool if it's not the last coat and pop another tray in and repeat. I'm typically doing 4 trays of 3lbs each when it's full swing coating season.
