MOLY COATING- how to?

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SomebodyTookMyName

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Alrighty folks, since moly seems to be a bit controversial in the preloading crowd, I feel I should preface my post with this:

I'm not looking for opinions on the performance or advantages/disadvantages of moly coating bullets here, BECAUSE I am planning to do an experiment in one of my own rifles comparing moly and non-moly bullets head-to-head to see precisely what the difference is in my own gun :)

I'm looking for advice or tips from people who've coated their own bullets on how to apply moly for best results. I was gifted a bunch of reloading supplies, including about half a pound of Lyman Super Moly powder, which I plan to use. I've seen folks using both hot or cold processes, wax/no wax, tumblers, steel balls, etc. so I'm wondering- what process have you used for moly coating, and how did it turn out?

Will post my own coated vs non-coated results later on :)
 
I still moly for competition

I used to coat bullets using the dry method tumble for 4hrs. I have changed to the wet method tumble for 1hr, much cleaner better results.
I reuse the moly slurry and add more Lyman Super Moly powder to the mixture.

I use bottles i get from the dollar store depending on the weight of the bullet i will add 60 and 80 per bottle for 30cal, (based on my tumbler).
I will cover the bullets 3/4 full with hot water. I do not fully cover them.
first step is to clean them using Dawn dish soap. then dry


Here a link to the details
https://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/moly-coating-using-the-wet-method.3922894/

Cheers
Trevor
 
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Trevor60 said:
I still moly for competition

I used to coat bullets using the dry method tumble for 4hrs. I have changed to the wet method tumble for 1hr, much cleaner better results.
I reuse the moly slurry and add more Lyman Super Moly powder to the mixture.

I use bottles i get from the dollar store depending on the weight of the bullet i will add 60 and 80 per bottle for 30cal, (based on my tumbler).
I will cover the bullets 3/4 full with hot water. I do not fully cover them.
first step is to clean them using Dawn dish soap. then dry


Here a link to the details
https://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/moly-coating-using-the-wet-method.3922894/

Cheers
Trevor
Click to expand...

Ooh that's super helpful! Definitely sounds like a slicker process than dry coating and waxing.
 
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Four hours, really?

What were you using for tumbling media??

I used to use moly coated bullets when shooting HBR.

My system was simple, and utilized two vibratory tumblers. One for the dry Moly Kote and one for the Carnuba wax.

My stuff all came from Niko

As Trevor mentions, cleaning the bullets first is crucial to getting good adhesion of the Moly powder to the bullets. I found that a detergent, such as Lemshine (Canadian Tire) worked as well as anything, then after drying, rinsed the bullets in a bath of Methyl Hydrate, to clean off any residues left behind.

Dump the clean bullets onto a pan or cloth to let any residues evaporate. Then add your Moly powder to the stainless balls and dump in your bullets. Turn the vibrator on and let the balls do their work for about 45 minutes to an hour. After an hour, things don't get better IMHO.

Then, dump out the bullets, balls extra powder onto a colander that will allow the balls/powder to pass through and leave the bullets behind.

DO NOT TOUCH THE BULLETS AT THIS STAGE.

Add Carnuba Wax to the balls in the second vibratory tumbler turn it on to get the balls coated evenly, then dump in the bullets, being careful not to touch them with your hands. Moly isn't good for you and wherever the bullets are touched, there will be imperfections on the coating.

I let the bullets tumble in the wax for another hour and dumped them onto another colander to separate the bullets. Nice even, black coating on each bullet, which turned a shiny dark gray after a few hours of "breathing"

I liked to keep the coated/cured bullets separated from each other, in old CIL trays made especially for that purpose and came with ever 50 count box of bullets, in CIL boxes. Remember to wear rubber gloves when looking over the bullets and transferring them individually or even dumping them into a larger container.

The whole process took appx four hours total and the results were excellent.

One other thing, I used two tumblers because I didn't want cross contamination between the coatings, which makes a hell of a mess. It's also better to use more Moly than you think you should. What's left over, is reusable so it's not going to cost you anything.

When you've finished apply the Carnuba wax, wash everything afterwards, even if you're going to do another batch right away. That wax dries and will be one of the reasons to get splotchy or uneven coatings on the next batch. Again, wash with very hot water and Lemshine. Wash them well, rinse with very hot water and when dry, rinse with Methyl Hydrate from CT as well. Leave it all out to dry/evaporate. DO NOT TOUCH THESE BALLS WITH YOUR HANDS, UNLESS YOU'RE WEARING RUBBER GLOVES. The oils on your skin will give you all sorts of blemishes, which likely won't effect the performance of the bullets but when you're anal about accuracy, appearances do make a psychological difference.

My vibrating tumblers each had appx 5 pounds of stainless steel 3/16in balls to help the powder/wax to adhere to the bullet jackets.
 
I used dry tumbler with the steel shot that came with the Neco kit. At first I ran the bullets in corn cob for about 5 minutes to clean before moly coating. I later found out that this step isn't required. I would run the bullets in the moly for anywhere between 2 hours and 24 hours (that's what happens when the tumbler in running in the garage and you work shifts). I used a big slotted kitchen spoon to remove the bullets from moly. The sotted spoon allows the steel to drop through. Bullets were then places on an old towel or old T-shirt and rolled for a few minutes to remove the excess moly powder. I did not wax them.

Once the tumbler bowl and steel balls are seasoned it takes a very small amount of moly powder to coat several hundred bullets. I would just scoop out a small amount with the end of a screw driver. If you have a 1/2 lbs of moly you could probably coat a few hundred thousand bullets.

On a side note, I no longer moly coat my bullets.
 
Never used wax, I used the Lyman moly kit with the ceramic media and 2 bowls, 30 mins in the moly/ceramic, 5 mins in cob after, load and shoot.
Benefits...well, it's certainly controversial, I only use it in applications where I'm exceeding 3000fps or shooting really overbore cartridges, anything under I don't bother with it, I find it lowers pressure so powder charge needs a bump to get same velocity, I get better ES with coated vs not coated, I also don't clean the same with moly rifles, just oil and a few patches and that seems to keep everything more consistent for the next time out, so far it appears to be helping the throats on my magnums, bore scopes show very little signs of any erosion.
I never start with moly on a new barrel, I always break in with normal copper bullets, I only switch once the barrel is shooting consistent (after a thorough cleaning).
 
Great info here guys, thanks! I'm definitely leaning towards the wet method right now.

For anyone interested, I'm actually planning to moly coat these bullets for use in a custom smokeless muzzleloader. I'm running pre-sized bullet-to-bore loads, so I'm actually engraving the rifling lightly into the bullet as I load it. I figure moly coating should make loading/seating easier, because trying to seat bare copper jacketed bullets into rifling by hand, in even a lightly copper/carbon fouled bore, just sucks because you don't have a squishy sabot or lead bullet to take up the slack.

And if it reduces pressure or increases velocity even a tiny bit, that's just a bonus.
 
It will decrease pressure and will decrease velocity, sorry you can't have it both ways. lol When I used moly the load running in my target rifle was 2950 fps. Same load with bare bullets runs just a tad over 3000 fps.
 
maynard said:
It will decrease pressure and will decrease velocity, sorry you can't have it both ways. lol When I used moly the load running in my target rifle was 2950 fps. Same load with bare bullets runs just a tad over 3000 fps.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. I'm familiar enough with the rough concept- pressure goes down, speed goes down with it. I'm more hoping for easier loading and less fouling, and when velocity drops, I can simply bump my charge weight up more since there's no limit to my "case capacity" in a smokeless smokepole :)
 
Yep four hrs. i started with 4 worked down to less time but found sometimes there were inconsistencies and would need to tumble again. 4 hours was always safe and being a set and forget no issues with the amt of time it took.

No media, tried bb's but switch to straight bullet impact plating. Had I done smaller batches per bottle impact would have been greater and mostly likely better results in shorter period of time

I did wax one time, I didn't see the additional benefits of the extra step.

Moly bullets lowers pressure and speed. The upside is it lowers pressure more than speed... Norma's study report a decrease of 5% pressure 3% speed. You can get back to your naked bullet speed plus some at the same pressures.

Another benefit (i see) is that a lubed bullet (moly) allows for more consistent seating of your bullets... no metal to metal contact

Cheers
Trevor
 
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Trevor, I used Carnuba wax initially because it was part of the original Neco kit.

I tried not using it and the moly has a tendency to wipe off and get all over everything, including my hands

This thread got me thinking again and I went to the 224/30 shelf. I found a thousand 53 grn HP J4 jacketed custom bullets I had moly coated with moly/carnuba. They haven't seen daylight for at least 15 years. They looked like they were put into the box yesterday.

The 30 cal 135 grn were only moly coated. There were only a couple of hundred of them and the box had been moved around quite a bit. The inside of the box was black from the rubbed off Moly and even though the coating was still even, it was visibly thinner.

This brought me back to when I coated those bullets and why I kept on using the wax.

Moly powder is quite toxic. It shouldn't be touched with hands or ingested. That's the reason Neco suggests use of the wax.
 
At one time I had a spray can of molly. Stood the bullets upright on paper towel and spray them. Took longer to stand them up than to spray them. No idea if it can be bought in spray cans anymore or not. That was for my first 300WSM & it was very accurate using molly. For hunting purposes I don't bother any more.
 
I simply tumbled the bullets in a Lyman dry tumbler with a tablespoon of moly powder and steel shotgun shot. Ran the tumbler for a couple of hours (noisy as hell, BTW). The bullets all came out completley coated a nice, even gun metal grey. My buddy said they looked like they would be good for killing vampires.
The only thing I did special was to use a dedicated bowl for moly tumbling as I don't know if you could ever get the moly out of the plastic in the bowl.
 
Hitzy said:
Never used wax, I used the Lyman moly kit with the ceramic media and 2 bowls, 30 mins in the moly/ceramic, 5 mins in cob after, load and shoot.
Benefits...well, it's certainly controversial, I only use it in applications where I'm exceeding 3000fps or shooting really overbore cartridges, anything under I don't bother with it, I find it lowers pressure so powder charge needs a bump to get same velocity, I get better ES with coated vs not coated, I also don't clean the same with moly rifles, just oil and a few patches and that seems to keep everything more consistent for the next time out, so far it appears to be helping the throats on my magnums, bore scopes show very little signs of any erosion.
I never start with moly on a new barrel, I always break in with normal copper bullets, I only switch once the barrel is shooting consistent (after a thorough cleaning).
Click to expand...

This exactly for me as well, used them on zinc 9mm bullets because I was getting aweful fouling, they are loaded and ready to test, just haven't got around to it yet.
 
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