saskgunowner101
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- near Prince Albert
I stumbled across the page mentioned above before. Any opinions on plain base GC's, and do they work on bevel base bullets, or only flat base?
New to casting and coating.
- Thread starter PPCLI-Jim
- Start date
Plain base checks are for plain base bullets
saskgunowner101
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- near Prince Albert
Is a bevel base not also a plain base seeing it doesn't have a groove/GC shank though?
saskgunowner101
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- near Prince Albert
Bullets such as this
https://leeprecision.com/mold-dc-401-145-swc
Doesn't matter though, I've e-mailed the company.
https://leeprecision.com/mold-dc-401-145-swc
Doesn't matter though, I've e-mailed the company.
You may or may not have issues with the checks depending on the height of the bevel vs the height of the rim of the gas check.
just reading on this myself too, hadn't heard of gc for pb or bb, but they are, seem to be smaller dimension than regular gc's
found some info sagesoutdoors.com/plain-base-gas-checks/
seems like the sizer works the lead to the correct size including the thin gc resulting in it sticking
todays learn for me
Here's my earlier lesson in pc'ing. Being new, for me everything so far is a trial it seems.
Leads started out .381, tried some of a free-to-me powder and it wasn't sticking very good
So as a tin of acetone was sitting handy after cleaning the leads and remembering vague details of doing a powder/acetone slurry as a coating mix, I dropped in a few drops and presto! instant goo. Surmise it was too much powder with not enough acetone but the consistency was goo-ier than honey, had trouble even dropping them into the rack for baking
Result has good first appearance, good coating and passes the smash test but way way too thick. Wound up being .385 to .388 with variance on each, I think due to the goo sticking to the glove and not coating evenly to start, finger pinch spots were thinner than untouched.
Leads started out .381, tried some of a free-to-me powder and it wasn't sticking very good
So as a tin of acetone was sitting handy after cleaning the leads and remembering vague details of doing a powder/acetone slurry as a coating mix, I dropped in a few drops and presto! instant goo. Surmise it was too much powder with not enough acetone but the consistency was goo-ier than honey, had trouble even dropping them into the rack for baking
Result has good first appearance, good coating and passes the smash test but way way too thick. Wound up being .385 to .388 with variance on each, I think due to the goo sticking to the glove and not coating evenly to start, finger pinch spots were thinner than untouched.
Keep trying. I've only just started pc last winter. I like the idea of no lube, no leading. I usually only shoot lighter loads, so pc is made for me! The only "extra" thing I've tried was washing the bullets in acetone, let them dry and then pc. I just lay them out, try to keep the separated after pc'ing, then stuff them in my wobblemart toaster oven.
get a cheap hot plate and a lead casting thermometer. preheat your mold on the hot plate and get your lead temp up just a bit if you are using WW alloy. all of the bullets in your clip show the symptoms of a cold mold just judging from the bright shiny appearance and wrinkles in the bullet. you are quite close to dropping good uniform bullets, just get a bit more heat into the mold blocks. also if you can find some solder or pewter, add a bit of it to the pot, it is like cheating to get a well filled cavity and sharp edges on your bullets.
I normally add some Antimony and tin, this batch I forgot to, Lesson learned. The .41 cal mold is brass or bronze, it takes a while to heat up to temp. The .355 and the .312 are generally GTG after about 3 castings, as I let those sit a few seconds in the mold before I drop them. I'm using a LEE casting pot though. Thank you for the tips.
Whoa! Just dropped in and saw the last page of this thread... what are you doing!!! (Other than making life harder than it needs to be!)
Some guys are using guns to apply powder coating, but the easiest, least expensive, least messy way to powder coat bullets is to throw the bullets and some powder into a plastic container, and just shake and rattle it around to coat the bullets. Static electricity is your friend that coats the bullets.
If you want to refine it by adding some actual technique, you can do one or both of two things:
First, you can just rub your plastic containers in small circles on the carpet while giving it some mild shakes. That will get you lots of static electrical charge to make the powder stick.
Second, you can throw a tablespoon or two of airsoft BB's into the container with the powder coat powder and the bullets. Apparently, that also helps build up a static electricity charge.
Pick your rifle bullets out of the powder with a long pair of tweezers and put them into a mini icecube silicon tray and then bake them.
Your pictures and description were giving me flashbacks to when Barnes' original X-Bullets came out. Their performance on the local moose and elk sold me on them for life, but whatever their alloy composition was, it quickly coated the bore and then grouping went all to hell.
Anyways, I got a quart of a molybdenum sulphate solution used in the pulp mill, diluted it with MEK, then dipped the full diameter portion of the Barnes bullets in the MDS/MEK solution, stood them to dry and then loaded them. Looked almost as much a mess as your setup, but barrel fouling from the Barnes X bullets went away.
Go ahead and try doing your powder coating the easy way.
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If you're going to do more than piddle around with casting, do yourself a huge failure and buy a full size casting furnace i.e. 20 lbs or more. That might sound big, but you'll find out pretty quickly that it empties pretty quickly once you get running.
I started with two lee furnaces and ultimately those furnaces didn't run on electricity - they ran on my hate.
The more alloy in your furnace, the more consistent your temperatures throughout the pot. And with bigger capacities, when you throw your sprues and miscast bullets back in, it won't drag the temperature down as much when putting them back in.
But you've hit the nail on the head, with that comment. I got into casting to allow me to use a 69/71 Veterrli, because I couldn't find a commercially made equivalent. As I'm a retired ADHD prepper type, I want to see what all I can wring out of the equipment I can easily afford. While I don't really need to cast the .355 .311 .309 bullets, I simply WANTED to. If I can great, if not I'm pretty sure I can sell the molds and carry on. At this point about the only thing I need to do is get a little better at it. It's only a hobby for me, and I'm definitely getting usable .412 bullets for my Vet, The rest are going to be used for plinking at 50 to 100m, or on zombies if they start spawning.
.I thought about keeping my Veterlli as a rimfire, but reason kicked in. I've been assisting a friend at gun shows, post CV and have come across exactly 1 box of rimfire 10.4x38. They were in a wetted box, corroded, I might have purchased them but the 12 rounds were over 5$ each. So I waited and made the conversion to centerfire, thank you Jennings in Pritchard BC. Now I cast and powdercoat bullets, along with using 8mm Lebel cases. It's a once leading edge rifle, just as the BIG jumps in technology in powder, bullets, feed mechanism and bolt design In under 30 years we went from large bore black powder single shots to the Mauser 90's series as an example among with many others.
