Are you having to size your PC boolits?

Casting your own bullets saves a ton of money. Not only do you not have to have hundreds of dollars of stock invested and just sitting on your loading room floor, you can choose your bullet & cast it according to need.

There are 2 huge advantages to powder coating: 1. No lube effort required. Skipping the lube stage is a big deal! PC is incredibly slick and goes down the barrel fast & easy. Plus there is little residue . 2. PC your own bullets creates a very hard coating on your cast bullets, totally encapsulates them so there is no lead vapourization. Plus your cast bullets can be less than 10 BNH and still be supersonic.

Cast. PC. Size. Load.
 
I measured all of my as cast and got the following.

9mm - .359
44 - .431
38 - .358
45 - .452
45 - .455

The as cast I tried lubed with liquid Alox just happened to be the 45 at .452. The PC coated that gave me problems was the 45 at .455.

I guess sizing will be a necessity after all.

M
 
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gnmontey said:
What kind of effect does casting temperature have on as cast size? I tend to chaise the temperature all over the map as the pot drains and is replenished.
Most of my casts tend to be frosted aka too hot. The bunch I PC'd were nice shinny ones. I must have lucked out maintaining the sweet spot temp wise that day.

The as cast that measured .451 was frosted.

M
Click to expand...

Pick up a small fan from Canadian Tire. They run around $10 or so. Clamp it so the fan blows across your molds as they cool. The frosted bullets come from to hot a mold not your melt. I usually run three molds at a time to get away from over heating my molds. I rum my pots hot I have a Lee 20# pot over top of my RCBS Pro Melter. I drop my sprew and fresh ingots in the top pot. I refill the bottom pot from the top. Speeds up casting and I always have hot metal to cast with.

Take Care

Bob
 
So... the last two days were rainy here, hence a good opportunity to do some casting and coating.

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25lbs of 9mm 125gn. Approx 1400 in total.

Still have to size them and I'm still not convinced PC is the way to go for HG.

Maybe this batch will convince me?

The PC step goes pretty quickly. I had to do them twice due my lack of experience. Not sure why they won't coat fully the first time?

M
 

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gnmontey said:
So I had to do them twice due my lack of experience. Not sure why they won't coat fully the first time?
Click to expand...
I cast all my pistol bullets from wheel weights. Before powder coating I set a metal tray of them (maybe 100-125) on top of my toaster oven to pre-heat them. When they are ALMOST to hot to touch I drop them in a plastic container with the powder coat, put on the lid and swirl them for 15-20 seconds. Using tool blue (which appears to be what you're using) I get pretty close to 100% coverage with one coat. Then into the oven for 12-13 minutes, taken out & set aside to cool. While they are baking I preheat another batch & swirl them so it's a continuous process. Tool blue, gloss black & clear all seem to give near 100% coverage. Some other colours (red & green, for example) don't give similar results with this method. Tip of my hat to hatman1793 who clued me in to this technique.

BTW I notice a significant decrease in the amount of smoke generated by PC bullets compared to conventionally lubed bullets (no lube to burn off?). Also, I just cleaned my pistol after firing about 800 PC'd rounds. One wet patch & one dry patch & the barrel was sparkling clean. Not a hint of leading with this method.

Takes longer than conventional lubing but I think the benefits are worth it. I also have 3 trays on the go so I'm probably PCing at least 450-500/hour. Next I'm going to get two ovens going at the same time which should increase my output rate.
 
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