Powder coat tumbling. Do they tumble?

[wheelguns]

Fresh cast bullets definately coat better. This is just a thought, but perhaps the acetone evaporates too fast and leaves a residue on them. I have coated store bought, previously lubed bullets, by soaking them overnight in mineral spirits. Then, I soaked them in warm water with dawn to remove any residue overnight. The next day, I would dry them in the oven for 10min at 200 degrees. Coat the warm bullets and bake. It was a pain in the neck, but I didn’t have a mold for those particular bullets. You can tell if you still have residue on them, because you will smell it when you dry the bullets.

[cas]

I tried soap and water first. Then brake cleaner. And acetone last.

And there really shouldn't have been anything on them. the weren't sized/lubed or sprayed with anything. Dunno.

I'll keep playing with them. Decided to coat the rest of the new one's tonight instead.

[wheelguns]

Something else that I learned is to powdercoat then size. When I first started, I sized some first, and the powder wouldn’t stick. I’m not sure why, but the sizing die must have contaminated them. Just throwing it out there, maybe it will help someone.

[cas]

What I'm noticing is a disproportionate accumulation of powder on the ogive of these bullets. All the bullets that have the shank nicely covered, have clumped up powder on the nose/ogive.

[sixshot]

cas, your bullets look like they have too much powder on them to me. That might not be the case but it sure looks like it. I would say shake them harder in the colander before baking & then always size after they are cool. Don't wait too long as they will age harden. I've mentioned this before but if bullets are going through your lube sizer hard you better spray them with Hornady One Shot Case Lube are you're going to get a stuck bullet.
Also I've never seen the need for acetone, just make sure your bullets are clean. If you aren't going to coat them right away then cover them to keep them clean. I've coated bullets that were quite old & never had a problem but they were clean, if they get some dust or something else on them then the powder might not coat like it should.
If you're doing the shake & bake method & they don't look coated enough just put the lid back on & swirl for a minute & then up & down pretty hard for a few seconds & you should have a better coating, if not it's your container or not enough powder. As mentioned the round cool whip with the diamond emblem & the 5 in the center seems to work best but I've also used containers with no marking on them & had excellent results. Mostly I use the Hornady tumbler & lots of bullets.

Dick

[bushog]

I didn't read all these posts carefully so please ignore if I repeat.....

You have to use a container that produces static electricity in order to convey a charge to the bullets so the stuff will stick.

No charge...no stick.....

Look at the instructions on Miha's website.....they're very good....

[cas]

Anyone ever lube the bullets after they've been coated?

I was tossing culls into a pile to be melted down... then I thought about it, they're beautiful bullets, they just have thin spots. Then I thought... Why not just lube them and shot them?


Then I thought.... All the thin spots are on places that wouldn't have lube anyway, why not just shoot them?

[wheelguns]

Shoot em! Thin spots won’t matter.

[COR]

You need very little pc.... humidity is also a big factor.

No bb’s in the tumbler and just a small amount of powder goes a long way.

No need to degrease or clean... might as well just mess with that nasty lube mess if you’re gonna do that.

[cas]

Well I'm running them through the sizer anyway, it's no extra effort to add lube.

I'm finding I don't need the dry coverage that I thought I did, the "flow" is covering most of the spots/gaps. I do see that a darker color would make it easier to see the thin spots. I finally got that older/harder batch to take well enough yesterday. They were very hard/slick/shiny bullets, looked like they just came out of the mold, despite being possibly 3-4 years old (I thought about it ore and it was a LOT longer ago than I first thought). IIRC someone had given me a bunch of linotype and I was playing with that)

I'm only coating because I'm trying very soft lead. So soft I need to use a round felt polishing bob on my top punch to not deform the bullet. They may not shoot for beans and have nothing to do with the coating.

[COR]

I found that (relatively) low bhn is where the pc really shines. I’m betting you’ll be pleased.

[cas]

Sooo... got to shoot them today. All in all, very happy. My soft ones... mystery alloy #1 isn't pure lead, but it's dang close. The hard ones,mystery alloy #2...? They're fairly hard?

I can't really say how the soft one's shot.
1. This is the first time all year I've fired any of the big stuff.
2. I haven't been shooting much at all, what I have has been fast & sloppy USPSA with a 1911.
3. After a neck injury a couple years ago, my left arm shakes like I've got the palsy. I'm a mere shadow of my former self.

I shot the soft one's first, figuring if I even made it to the hard one's I'd be frazzled and flinching. It was a mistake, I got better as I got used to the recoil again. I can say there were no weird fliers, every bad shot was called "Yup... that's where the sights were" or I was muzzle dipping. By the time I shot the hard ones I'd settled down and was very happy with how they shot.


This is the first one, it went through 2 feet of water, then 1 foot of sand. I was surprised how little it deformed, but I guess with no hollow point for the water to do it's thing in, it just punch through. This load with regular lead goes 1075fps. (500gr bullet)




Here are the soft ones fired into sand. The mushrooms are pretty much down to the base on most of them.



Three of them I shot through this pine tree stump before the sand... which three though I don't know.




Here are the "hard" ones.





I shoot all my big stuff into that container full of sand so I can recover my bullets. Mostly so I can reuse the lead. I got back 29 out of 30.
I need to get another color so I can keep the soft stuff from the hard stuff.

[matt56]

I use the shake and bake method with smoke's clear. Any food grade Tupperware container will work as they seem to generate the most static. I do mine in small batches of 50-100 and have a big toaster oven dedicated just for bullets. Very pleased with the results.

I can't seem to find any pictures though.

[dmize]

Here is my 2 cents.
I powder coat .312 to .512 in a tumbler. The .512's are a bitch.
I have done a hundred .432's and then tried 525 grain .512's and they don't coat for crap.
Im guessing its just the sheer size of the bullet and the amount of static electricity required and it cant build enough to keep up with the tumbler beating on them. I use a cheap self contained PC gun on a screen wire tray for coating them and my heavier .500 bullets. FYI the gun doesn't work very good either.
The bullets in your picture look pretty good to me

[cas]

I switched to my older small tumbler with a rounder bowl and softer plastic.... they didn't jump around much, but a good deal more than the tumbler I tried first. With that one they literally all just stayed in one spot, spinning round and round like little roller bearings.