Powder coating

[iron369]

I’ve been messing around with casting my own bullets lately. I’d really like to powder coat them so I don’t have to worry much about the hardness of my lead. I’ll get more into making specific lead recipes as I get more experience. I got some powder in today so I thought I’d coat a few bullets that I bought in a bin of scrap lead. Coating went fairly well. I thought I might need two coats, but since it was my very first attempt and on bullets I wasn’t going to shoot anyway, it didn’t matter too much how they turned out. I found out either 450 degrees in my toaster oven is much hotter than it is supposed to be or the bullets had a lot of tin in them. Maybe in a day or two I’ll try out my wheel weight lead and see how that holds up or if the toaster oven melts them too.

[samb.]

try 400* what was your bake time?

[iron369]

It was supposed to be 18 minutes. I removed these after 12.

[Vividia]

might need to go to a kitchen store, or the internet, and invest in an oven thermometer. It's rare for ovens to actually heat to the temp you selected, they are often high or low. Mine is on the high side. At least with an oven thermometer you can adjust to what you really want.

[kyswede]

Toaster oven thermometers are usually 50 degrees off. Go to Wal-Mart and buy an oven thermometer for $5. I cure my PC bullets at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. I allow about 10 minutes for bullets to get up to temp before starting timer.

[iron369]

I will get a thermometer. I have one for my casting pot. I set the temp by the powder manufacturers recommendation. It said 450 for 18 minutes. It was a brand new toaster oven I bought just for powder coating. It still shouldn’t be hot enough set at 450 to melt lead. If it was a little higher than the 450 tin would melt though. I’ll get it figured out. I was just posting my failure and will probably post more experiments as I try different powders and such. Lots of trial and error to come.

[iron369]

New color today.
It makes nice projectiles.

[ssracer]

Is that UN helmet blue? Lol


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[iron369]

Is that UN helmet blue? Lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Some powder manufacturers call it Ford Light Blue. The guy I get it from calls it Carolina blue.

[iron369]

I think I’ve given my last attempt at translucent copper pc. I’m tired of casting decent bullets and just remelting them because I don’t like them. They seem coated well enough for the purpose for which the powder was bought, but it’s uniform. Like it gels and flows into a clump. They look pretty evenly coated when dry, but not so much after baking. This is a batch of 180ish.

[PDM]

Is that UN helmet blue? Lol


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Some powder manufacturers call it Ford Light Blue. The guy I get it from calls it Carolina blue.

That’s not for light blue. It’s definitely NC blue

This is Ford light blue

[PDM]

I think I’ve given my last attempt at translucent copper pc. I’m tired of casting decent bullets and just remelting them because I don’t like them. They seem coated well enough for the purpose for which the powder was bought, but it’s uniform. Like it gels and flows into a clump. They look pretty evenly coated when dry, but not so much after baking. This is a batch of 180ish.

Post-apocalypse petina

[iron369]

I learn everything the hardest way possible.

[iron369]

Tried out a new color tonight. It is kinda ugly, but coated really well. About 250 225gr 30cal lead cast bullets.

[PDM]

Those look good. Too bad the color. Lol

The red ones look like they’ve already been used

[iron369]

Powder coated today a batch I casted last night. I ran a batch in blue. Then tumbled a batch red, but really didn’t have enough red to get good coverage so I added some of the leftover blue. Kinda like it.

[iron369]

I’m not terribly impressed with the latest color I bought. It’s a useable coating and passes the smash test, but the color is pretty blotchy. As much work as this whole process is, I want great results. I’m probably going to play around with application before giving up.