Powder Coating Cast Bullets!

[savingprivateyang]

Veeerrrrry interesting! I'm really liking this idea a lot. I'm going to be heading to a Harbor Freight in a couple weeks, I may have to look into this!

One question though. Does the baking process ruin the oven that you are using? Can't one just use their kitchen oven?

Baking the powder coat releases fumes that have been deemed toxic. Everyone I've talked to has suggested using a dedicated powder coat oven.

A good source for a larger oven is the junk yard. There are usually some old electric stoves just sitting there you can take. The top burners could double as mold pre-heaters also. I would just set it up in the garage and mark it as a "Powder Coating Only" stove so no one tries to use it to cook.

One thing I do is pre-heat the boolits. This allows you to coat them without them having to be electricly charged. The powder coat will just melt right onto the hot boolits and stick.

ETA: Here is the thread about my casting adventures with 300blk subsonic boolits.
viewtopic.php?f=141&t=82162

[Colorado CJ]

I loaded up a few hundred 9mm powder coated bullets. I used the Lee 358 105 SWC mold and 4 gr of W231.



I shot a little over 100 powder coated bullets through the M&P at the range today. Accuracy was great and there was VERY LITTLE SMOKE. About as much smoke as when I shoot jacketed bullets.

I took the barrel out and there was only really powder residue in the barrel, no leading at all.

Here is the barrel after shooting. Sorry for the bad photo, it's hard to get the depth of field with this type of shot.




It took only one pass with a bore snake and the barrel is perfectly clean and shiny. Here is the bore after 1 pass of the bore snake.




I'll have to do more testing, but so far powder coating seems like it is going to work GREAT for lead bullets. No more smelly, messy lubes and no more smoke. Most importantly NO MORE LEADED BARRELS!!

Can't wait to load up some 155gr 300 BLK rounds to test out!

[vz58]

Hurry up with the 155's will ya!! I just bought the powder and gun. Looking to do 155's and some fast moving 135 gr 10mm to test the high end of the powder coat. That cast boolit thread was L O N G....

[imyomama]

ok , so stupid question . I'm not equipped or smart enough to cast my own , but if I buy some bullets already made. what can I do to get them powder coated?

the bullets come lubed already .. how do I take that off .. and then i assume i should spray them , bake them and then get a sizing die ?

any info appreciated !!! this sounds very interesting !

[vz58]

Acetone to remove lube. Powder coat bake size load shoot. Check out the cast boolits thread.

Sorry for short answer. On phone.

[Ken73]

Acetone to remove lube. Powder coat bake size load shoot. Check out the cast boolits thread.

What he said. Put a little acetone in a cup (not styrofoam of course) and toss a few bullets in at a time. Swirl around, pick out with gloved hands. Wipe with a rag to get the residual lube off.

Powder coat the bullets with a powder coating gun. Harbor Freight has them pretty cheap and you can usually catch them on sale or get it with a coupon. You'll need an air compressor to run it; HF has those also - you can get a small pancake nail-gun type compressor for $50 that will do the job (the powder coat gun doesn't require high pressure nor a lot of flow.)

You'll need a toaster oven (though the bigger the oven, the more bullets you can coat.) Best to buy your wife a new one and take her old one if you're clever. Don't reuse it for food ever again! Place non-stick aluminum foil on the tray, place bullets on tray, ground to powder coat power supply and spray with powder. Electrostatic cling will get the powder on them.

Carefully put coated bullets in toaster oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, let cool and peel from foil.

Size/load from there as if they were lubed!

Here's some of mine:



FYI, casting isn't too hard, but does require a bit of an investment to start with, and finding lead or wheel weights for free has become difficult at best. I wound up buying most of mine as range lead for around $1/pound but it's still WAY cheaper than jacketed bullets especially if you shoot a variety of calibers like I do.

[one4freedom]

That process would not coat the bottom of the bullet. It seems most people leave the bottom bare lead much like FMJs.

[talonxracer]

I thought I read in that thread that they sprayed some powder on the foil, put the rounds on the powder and then sprayed the rest of the round.

[one4freedom]

I had my first run of doing this over the weekend. I used Lee's .40 mold with water quenched 50/50 wheel weights and pure lead. I got a little toaster oven from Walmart and tried to get too many bullets on the sheet the first time. Many of them were only partially coated.



I resized after coating them to .401, and the finished coated bullets were coming in at 185 - 187 grains. I loaded them to 1.135" and did 2 different loads with 4.7 and 4.9 grs of Unique.

I fired them through a stock GLOCK 35 barrel and chronographed the 4.9s in the 925 fps range. Can't remember what the 4.7 load was doing off the top of my head.

I got some lead fouling after a few shots, but it didn't seem to get any worse as I went through about 90 rounds total. Can't say how they were doing accuracy wise, but I was able to hit 2 gal jugs of water from 40 meters off hand, so they'll fit my purposes in that regard.

The fouling was much less than trying to fire regular cast bullets through that barrel, but it's still more than I would like. I may experiment with sizing before coating and letting them turn out a bit bigger, or maybe put a heavier coat on and then size. I'm really anxious to get my Lee 230 gr. .308 mold to try some in the BLK. Unfortunately I am on backorder with Midway.

[one4freedom]

I thought I read in that thread that they sprayed some powder on the foil, put the rounds on the powder and then sprayed the rest of the round.

Ah, maybe. I mostly skimmed through the castboolits thread. I'll give that a shot and see if it goes any better at reducing the lead fouling.