Coating bullets.

C

Chainsaw.

New member
I was talking with a guy at a match last week who was telling me about a bullet coating process where he mixed up some stuff with acetone and then baked it onto his bullets. His results were great, better than the dry powder coating results Ive seen. Unfortunately we got busy with the match and I neglected to ask what process/brand etc of coating this was. Can anyone enlighten me? Id really like to try it.
 
Could be that material or it could be a way of applying the powder coating resin powder. Dampen and dip and dry and bake. So it may not ultimately have been anything different. I gather some are mixing a little graphite or moly or motor mica into the powder at the same time. You can do that with clear coat powder if you want to see the dry lube. My concern with the concept is weakening the coating. I would want to experiment carefully, looking for quantity limits.

I'll move this thread to the casting forum for you. Coating discussions there have been a lot more extensive.
 
For my own uses I like the KISS principal and having to deal with the acetone is just something I would rather not do. Just tossing them around in a plastic bowl and rubber BB's works just fine.

Not that I have any real issues with acetone since growing up it was as common around the house as LAVA soap. Just that having something else to mix up or have to keep track of proportions with is not something I want for the few hundreds of bullets I coat.
 
I've been using the dry shake and bake method for a couple of months with great success. At first some of the coats didn't turn out very pretty but a little testing proved that even the ugly, splotchy, 75% covered bullets worked better than any tumble lube method I had ever tried.

At this point I've worked the bugs out of my process and can get wonderful results every time. It takes a little more time than using LLA but it's worth it IMO.
 
Reddog, the ugly, splotchy uneven (dry) powder coating that Ive seen is what stears me away from wanting to go that route and made me like the liquid results Ive seen. Care to expand on your process that helped?
 
Reddog, the ugly, splotchy uneven (dry) powder coating that Ive seen is what stears me away from wanting to go that route and made me like the liquid results Ive seen. Care to expand on your process that helped?
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Yeah, but here's the thing. I get decent coverage with the HF red, and while it is a bit 'blotchy', that all gets ironed out when you resize it. The only critical part is the bearing surface and that always gets 100% coated.

Some people go to great lengths for 'pretty' colored bullets but frankly it's just for appearances.

These were done with the simple 'shake and bake' method.

 
Some people go to great lengths for 'pretty' colored bullets but frankly it's just for appearances.
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BINGO!

chris in va...you are absolutely correct, powder coating does not have to be pretty to work just as well.

Over on castboolits, that crowd goes to great lengths to make them "pretty"...complete wasted of time, from a performance standpoint.

If your goal is to make beautiful bullets, more power to you...but it ain't necessary for them to perform perfectly.
 
That makes sense. There are always a few bullets in a regular box of cast bullets that the lube has fallen out of. No problem to load and shoot them.

I have to add the comment that I'd not thought of camouflaging cartridges as lipstick before.;):D
 
Just the right shade of red for that special terrorist...











Even holiday themed....







Yeah, they don't have to be pretty to work, but you CAN have fun with them. ;)
 
How did you get the two tone? I like :cool:

Picked up a toaster oven at goodwill. Ill order some powder coat from hsrbor freight soon.
 
So I got all my powder coating stuff set up and got to work. I cast up about 700 bullets, shook them up in a tuperware, used a small set of needle nose and set them on the pan, cooked em in the (goodwill) toaster oven. They came out looking pretty good. I can see where you guys are saying the heck with trying to get them to pretty, setting them all on the pan base down takes a while. Pretty pleased with the results, hopefully this will keep the leading to a minimum!
 
Keep your hardness appropriate ti the velocity and don't expect that PC will replace a jacket. Staying with good cast lead loads you will experience much less leading.
 
Keep your hardness appropriate ti the velocity and don't expect that PC will replace a jacket. Staying with good cast lead loads you will experience much less leading.
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No one on the Cast Boolit site is reporting leading with too hot of a load...they have been saying that accuracy suffers but leading does not seem to be a problem when firing properly powder coated bullets.
 
I wouldn't worry that much about what the coating looks like. My coated bullets look terrible (dry tumbling in a #5 plastic tub). I have yet to see ANY leading in any of my pistols, .300 blackout AR, or cowboy lever guns that use coated bullets, despite my awful looking bullets.
Commercial lubed bullets were always awful in my guns, and even home cast were occasionally cause for leading. But coated bullets have a perfect track record so far for me.
 
I've done it both ways using the shake and bake method and the powder coat spray gun technique. Either way takes the same amount of time because I'm limited by the convection toaster oven bake time.

By the time I setup the bullets on their base and spray them the oven will almost be finished baking the current batch. Same with the shake method but even more so waiting on the oven to finish.

With this in mind I go ahead and use the spray method.
 
By the time I setup the bullets on their base and spray them the oven will almost be finished baking the current batch. Same with the shake method but even more so waiting on the oven to finish.
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I shake and bake only...NO waiting on the oven after the first batch. While the second batch is baking, I am sizing the first batch. I cook 400-500 at the time and I will finish sizing just about the time the oven finishes cooking the second batch. From there, I just repeat the process until I am done coating and sizing.

Also, I just dump them and bake them, no standing them on the base...not necessary.
 
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