Boolit Casting, à new experience begins

[mapper]

I have some coated boolits, some cast boolits with the hard parrafin/carnuba type wax,
But haven't really loaded many of the coated ones.
I remember a conversation I had with someone about coated boolits and he was pushing them fairly hard, and said that powder coated could go to 2200 fps or so, I'll have to verify and check that.

But the thing is it was more than I thought,.
Now on just reading the first link I posted, and only getting to the lube section, is as far as I've got.
But that took it past bullet hardness.

So I'm just going off 1 source so far about bullet hardness, obturation, and lubrication in regard to sealing against bore, and lube as it goes down rifling.

That kind of brings up the issue of powder coating as a gilding material, or jacket like a copper plating, or as a lubricity agent.

Lubes work when they melt and flow. They help to seal the bore as well.
Alox and beeswax have been used for decades, as well as other things.

Light target loads <900 fps behave diffrent than loads >1100 fps
so I'm not expecting a lot of differences in 45 and 38, but would see more in 9 mm as it's pushed faster.
Same for magnum pistol calibers.

So I'm in research and learning mode currently.
I haven't scoured the forums at castboolits dot Com, but I know it is a resource that I will use.
I'm trying to get a good overview at this point.

Now as far as way better between cast and lubed boolits and powder coated ones, can you explain a bit on that,? I'd like to hear what you've experienced.

[BWest]

Also, there is a difference between "powder coat" and "hitek" coatings, Powder Coat is (in my view) all encompassing, including the powder coat paints used in automotive and other manufacturing. Hitek is basically the same end result (a bit thinner and smoother result I think), but is a commercial product designed specifically for bullets (could be wrong here), and goes on wet instead of dry like normal powder coat paint.

My powder coating method:

Powder coat I use:
I have been successful with Harbor Freight Red powder coat. I don't know why, but it is known to be the best of the Harbor Freight colors for coating bullets. I would not recommend starting with this however, I would suggest any of the powder coats made by Eastwood. I use their "light ford blue" and it it covers well. https://www.eastwood.com/hotcoat-powder-ford-light-blue.html

I think Powder by the Pound and Smoke's are also brands people use for this.

Procedure:

after casting the bullets, I shake them around in a yogurt or similar plastic container with a little bit of the powder. Plastic containers have static electricity that causes the powder to stick to the bullets. Containers with the Recycling symbol 5 seem to be the best for this. These are the soft white plastic tubs like for yogurt, cool whip, cookie dough, feta cheese and stuff like that.

Once they are covered, I dump them on a piece of mesh to get the excess powder off, then either bake them on the mesh, or on a piece of baking parchment paper. Some people stand them up using forceps or gloved fingers, but I think the slightly prettier bullets that come out are not work the hassle of standing them all up. you can always coat them again if there are some bald spots from bullets sticking together or to the mesh.

I bake them in a old electric toaster oven I got for 5 dollars from the salvation army. The "rule" is 20 minutes at 400 degrees, but I've played around with lower temps for longer and gotten good results.

After they are done, I quench them in water. To test the adhesion, you can smash a coated bullet with a hammer, the coating should not come off and should flex with the smashed bullet.

Then just load as normal.

[BWest]

Here is some of my .30 Carbine coated in Eastwood Ford blue:

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[Cattle/Horses]

Here is some of my .30 Carbine coated in Eastwood Ford blue:

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Before I read anything, just as I saw the pic, I thought, DAMN, a 357 loaded with a Viagra pill - that's a hell of a way to administer it.

[BWest]

Before I read anything, just as I saw the pic, I thought, DAMN, a 357 loaded with a Viagra pill - that's a hell of a way to administer it.

best not to mix up your hard-on boolits with others should you need to defend yourself from an attacker....

[Cattle/Horses]

best not to mix up your hard-on boolits with others should you need to defend yourself from an attacker....

Could be a new depth to the saying "shooting blanks".