300BlkTalk

I have been casting for 10 years. I have always used alox for my lube. I know have a 300 blk . I presume the lube could clog my gas port . I been thinking about powder coating where could i go to get good info on powder coating thanks

Take a look at Full.Lead.Taco youtube channel

He shows how he does it in several of his video's.

It isn't lube you should be worried about going in your gas tube, it's vaporized lead. The DI-ish system in ARs basically vents out the charging handle on your upper lip. Not where you want vaporized lead. DS can tell you his stories on how well that works out.

Just go for dry tumble powder coat method, using quality powders. Don't waste time with junk powders.

Shake them or vibrate them. Sift them. Dump a pile of them on a rack and Bake them. Knock them off the rack while still hot. Your labor will be low and your results will be excellent. If you want max hardness out of your alloy, size them (if applicable) then run them in the oven back to 400f for 40 minutes and dump them all in a bucket of water. You now have max heat treat and all your bullets have the same hardness as eachother.

Every additional step beyond that is a waste of time. Don't stand them up. Don't mix bullets to have to sort them back out. Don't fiddle with BBs or harbor freight powder.
Unless baseball rituals help you shoot better. If that's the case, stand them up, and keep your lucky primer sleeve in your left shoe while shooting.

p.s. I used to use the 45/45/10 method which is basically improved Alox tumbling, and it worked well for me. There was a very marginal time advantage, so for a while I used both it and PC. Then I just quit using anything other than PC. It is clean and encapsulated, and cheap. Leading is almost impossible barring huge problems. Your dies and hands stay clean, and it doesn't attract abrasive dirt. Loose Alox ammo always seems to be grimy, if you have noticed. Also no smoke other than the powder smoke.

You won't look back.

I tried PC for the first time with HF white. I was coating 230 grain Lee. Not a heavy coating but when loading bullets the die shaved a lot of lead down the side of the case. Never had that problem with 45 10 10 Alox. Your thoughts?

dieselherb wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 10:50 am I tried PC for the first time with HF white. I was coating 230 grain Lee. Not a heavy coating but when loading bullets the die shaved a lot of lead down the side of the case. Never had that problem with 45 10 10 Alox. Your thoughts?

Apparently you have not expanded the case mouth enough to prevent shaving. I prefer to flare them enough to clear, or mostly clear a gas check. If you're thinking that you don't need to expand the case mouth with boat tail bullets, I'll disagree. Further, If you're not expanding to about .002" under bullet diameter for plainbase, you're likely sizing your bullets when forcing them into undersize necks.

On this same vein, which powders would you consider "quality" powders for powder coating?

Generally it's going to be medium gloss powders that give high coverage area per weight. That means thin uniform application.

Powders that have descriptions that talk about filling defects are inherently the opposite of that.

Thin good, thick bad.

Generally 400*f p.e. tends to work well. Though I've had lower temp stuff work well, but it does seem to be easier to scuff.

It seems like sparkles and flakes go against durability and make them pickier to stick well, but you can make them work.

Pistol is less demanding, so you can get away with powders that perform worse. 300 BO subs are more or less the same. Super sonic has pressure and velocity. That means that brittle or easily abraded powders will be more likely to cause a problem.

IMO you can easily mess up any powder with a bit of contamination, and moisture makes them all trickier to apply. Moisture interferes with static.

Also, I think over baking can make a powder brittle. Over baking is going to be dependent on individual powders, and probably the mass of the bullets you are baking. So a better powder probably just means a powder that has a broader window of baking temp and time before you have messed it up.

I don't claim to know what the best powders are, but the attributes above seem to be in the right direction. I can say that it is easy to observe that some powders are worse, and that known good powders are easy and cheap, so it'd dumb to beat your head against the wall.

I generally recommend Steele Blue from powderbuythe pound. com as a good one that works well, and is easy to get good coverage with. There are many many others. A lot of people get good results with glass clear from them too.

Smoke's from CBA is good. I run full fps from AR10 PCd, no problem. CBA has a section for coatings starting back 8-9 yrs ago. Best I've seen is MOA @ 350yds 338 cast full jacketed fps. So yes it works.

I have tried HF white powder, didn't coat very well. Bought some white powder by the pound didn't about the same. Last batch bullets actually melted, had the toaster oven on 350-400 20 minutes? Seems like too much trouble for me 45 45 10 is easy compared to powder.