Powder coating bullets the easy way

[hswaters]

I spend a lot of time surfing youtube to learn the latest developments in things I am interested in. I don't mind copying whenever I find a good thing and I found a gem just recently. I had heard that powder coating bullets keeps your barrel clean and allows you to use lower hardness lead in your cast bullets. So I happen to have some range scrap and that is supposed to be really soft stuff. Not wanting the expense of ordering any super hard to mix with this stuff and being basically lazy I wanted something I can just coat, size, reload and shoot. I saw guys with electric charged powder spray guns and home made spray booths wearing dust masks bowing powder every where, sitting the bullets one at a time on non stick aluminum foil and when baked the bullets had a paint flange on the bottom and mostly no bottom coating. I saw guys pouring powder and solvent into a tupper ware dish and shaking it up and cooking better looking coated bullets but the process was messy and required handling solvents. Then I found the guy with the real answer. He just put the bullets in some tuperware like containers and tumbled them and poured them on a pizza screen and baked them. Total coverage and ready to be sized. That got me excited and I bought some horror freight powder and got hold of a toaster oven and got to work. Now the expert says that the horror freight powder does not give good coverage and I think he is right but I have not had time to order some better powder. Still I think things came out just fine. I loaded a bunch of 45 acp with my coated bullets and participated in a bowling pin shoot. No fouling in the barrel with the range scrap bullets and the horror freight coating. I even made a youtube video so everyone can see them made. Take a look.

Powder coating bullets the easy way - YouTube

 

[LJH]

nice, I am going to try that

 

[rsayloriii]

I've powder coated bullets with a gun. Pain the butt doing it in an apartment. Going to give this a look/watch and see if/how it'll make life easier. Bonus to the powder coating is being able to use it in the Glock without worry (seems to be 50/50 if it's ok or not with just plain uncoated/unjacketed lead).

 

[TX69]

Awesome!

 

[TheDan]

Very nice. What temp do you set the oven to? There's no boogered up spots in the coating where the bullets touch each other or the screen?

 

[jrbfishn]

Very nice work.

from an idgit coffeeholic

 

[hswaters]

Very nice. What temp do you set the oven to? There's no boogered up spots in the coating where the bullets touch each other or the screen?

The oven is set at 400. Sorry I must have left that out.

 

[hswaters]

The oven is set at 400. Sorry I must have left that out. If you separate them right off as they come out of the oven I find very little damage. A few bald spots on a few bullets does not seem to cause any problem. Shot over 150 at one time and pushing a Kleenex through the barrel was all the cleaning it needed.

 

[popper]

Hswaters - works great, been doing it for ~ 2 years. HF red works best of the cheap powder. 30 cal PB to > 1800, GC > 2400, close to MOA. You do have to watch the humidity for the dry tumble method. Heard reports of the Lee BT BO sub. coated shooting good @ 1500 in 308W, no gc.

 

[hswaters]

Hswaters - works great, been doing it for ~ 2 years. HF red works best of the cheap powder. 30 cal PB to > 1800, GC > 2400, close to MOA. You do have to watch the humidity for the dry tumble method. Heard reports of the Lee BT BO sub. coated shooting good @ 1500 in 308W, no gc.

I have only been reloading for about two years and casting for about two years and powder coating about one week. So this is all new and exciting for me. I am still a newbie to all of it. I used range scrap for casting the bullets and did not worry about how hard it was. No problems with barrel fouling at all. So naturally I am excited and happy with the results. It mostly frees me up from worry about where to get good lead and all of the work involved in tumble lube, size, tumble lube. I figure if a total novice powder coater like me can get good results then everyone can. I have seen lots of different ways of doing this and the method does not seem to matter as far as the results are concerned. I did not find it appealing to spray them on a board covered with aluminum foil, or to mix solvent with the powder and bullets either. If I had to do either I might not have wanted to go to the trouble. Then I found a fellow doing the coating with a bare minimum of materials and steps. I will experiment with the whole thing as I go along and if I find things that improve the process or the results I will just be that much further ahead of the game. Thanks for your reply.

 

[popper]

#5 large plastic bowel, black AS BBs, HF red. Swirl, shake, pick out with hemostats & place on no-stick Al foil in convection toaster oven @ 400 for 10 min. Size. Done. All the details @ cast boolits site.

 

[pikeman]

I spend a lot of time surfing youtube to learn the latest developments in things I am interested in. I don't mind copying whenever I find a good thing and I found a gem just recently. I had heard that powder coating bullets keeps your barrel clean and allows you to use lower hardness lead in your cast bullets. So I happen to have some range scrap and that is supposed to be really soft stuff. Not wanting the expense of ordering any super hard to mix with this stuff and being basically lazy I wanted something I can just coat, size, reload and shoot. I saw guys with electric charged powder spray guns and home made spray booths wearing dust masks bowing powder every where, sitting the bullets one at a time on non stick aluminum foil and when baked the bullets had a paint flange on the bottom and mostly no bottom coating. I saw guys pouring powder and solvent into a tupper ware dish and shaking it up and cooking better looking coated bullets but the process was messy and required handling solvents. Then I found the guy with the real answer. He just put the bullets in some tuperware like containers and tumbled them and poured them on a pizza screen and baked them. Total coverage and ready to be sized. That got me excited and I bought some horror freight powder and got hold of a toaster oven and got to work. Now the expert says that the horror freight powder does not give good coverage and I think he is right but I have not had time to order some better powder. Still I think things came out just fine. I loaded a bunch of 45 acp with my coated bullets and participated in a bowling pin shoot. No fouling in the barrel with the range scrap bullets and the horror freight coating. I even made a youtube video so everyone can see them made. Take a look.

Powder coating bullets the easy way - YouTube

I tried your link and it didn't work. Take a look at my post on powder coating on the

What did you do today in the world of reloading? Monday the 13th​

 

[paknheat]

The link worked for me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[pikeman]

I have tried all of the different methods. I tried the swish around in a bowl. I tried a tumbler method and the wet method. The swishing method does not add enough static to put very much powder on the bullets. The same results with the tumbler. The wet method was messy and not that great of coverage. Along with areas on each bullet where it is touching another bullet or the screen with no coating on the bullet.
I bought a Harbor freight rock tumbler and made a 4 inch pvc tumbler tube. PVC makes a lot of static when something is tumbled in it. I had to use a angle grinder cut off wheel to modify the frame of the tumbler a little so the 4" tube would fit. I put a 4 inch pipe plug in each end of the tube and added a good hand full of lead cast bullets and about ¾ cup of quality powder coating powder. I also add a hand full of plastic pellets use in the airsoft guns. They help add a static charge to the slugs. When the bullets are dumped out of the tumbler and I pinch the lube grove with my small set of side cutter pliers. I usually tap them lightly to remove the excess powder. I ground the pliers so they have a vert fine edge that fits well in the grove. I then place them on a silicone backing sheet sitting in a toaster oven pan. I stand them on their flat back end and slide them into the toaster oven. They do not stick to the silicone baking sheet. They then spend 20 minutes at around 275-300 F and then drop them into cold water. I get a very even coating including on the bottom on all the bullets. I then run them all through a Lee bullet sizer. After sizing they are ready to load.
When fired the powder coat does not come off the bullets at all. I have shot them through a 2x4 and the powder coating is still attached. Absolutely no leading of the barrel. I have pictures of the finished bullets before and after firing. I think the quality of your powder coating powder is very important. None of the Harbor freight powders will work very well. Buy a better powder and you get better results. My local powder coating shop only charges me 10.00/ lb. That is equivalent to about 3 pints of powder. That will do a ton of bullets. I have powder coated around 1000 bullets and I have more then half of the powder left.
I use a 20.00 toaster oven from Walmart and it work just fine. I powder coat my fishing jigs in it as well. The tumbler is the clue to give the bullets a good static charge so the powder sticks to the slugs. This is what a coated bullet looks like. No lube needed they just need to be sized before loading.

 

[hornetguy]

I have tried all of the different methods. I tried the swish around in a bowl. I tried a tumbler method and the wet method. The swishing method does not add enough static to put very much powder on the bullets. The same results with the tumbler. The wet method was messy and not that great of coverage. Along with areas on each bullet where it is touching another bullet or the screen with no coating on the bullet.
I bought a Harbor freight rock tumbler and made a 4 inch pvc tumbler tube. PVC makes a lot of static when something is tumbled in it. I had to use a angle grinder cut off wheel to modify the frame of the tumbler a little so the 4" tube would fit. I put a 4 inch pipe plug in each end of the tube and added a good hand full of lead cast bullets and about ¾ cup of quality powder coating powder. I also add a hand full of plastic pellets use in the airsoft guns. They help add a static charge to the slugs. When the bullets are dumped out of the tumbler and I pinch the lube grove with my small set of side cutter pliers. I usually tap them lightly to remove the excess powder. I ground the pliers so they have a vert fine edge that fits well in the grove. I then place them on a silicone backing sheet sitting in a toaster oven pan. I stand them on their flat back end and slide them into the toaster oven. They do not stick to the silicone baking sheet. They then spend 20 minutes at around 275-300 F and then drop them into cold water. I get a very even coating including on the bottom on all the bullets. I then run them all through a Lee bullet sizer. After sizing they are ready to load.
When fired the powder coat does not come off the bullets at all. I have shot them through a 2x4 and the powder coating is still attached. Absolutely no leading of the barrel. I have pictures of the finished bullets before and after firing. I think the quality of your powder coating powder is very important. None of the Harbor freight powders will work very well. Buy a better powder and you get better results. My local powder coating shop only charges me 10.00/ lb. That is equivalent to about 3 pints of powder. That will do a ton of bullets. I have powder coated around 1000 bullets and I have more then half of the powder left.
I use a 20.00 toaster oven from Walmart and it work just fine. I powder coat my fishing jigs in it as well. The tumbler is the clue to give the bullets a good static charge so the powder sticks to the slugs. This is what a coated bullet looks like. No lube needed they just need to be sized before loading.

Yours are coated very nicely... .mine still end up with some "light" spots on them, but full coverage....
Here's some 38 special heavy SWC that I loaded yesterday...