Powder coating question

kjohn

kjohn

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I coated some 150 gr. LEE flat nose yesterday with the exalted Emerald Tool Blue. They covered decently, but are kind of pebbled. I sized them .309 and will shoot them out of my Canadian Centennial carbine and/or my nice old Savage 99 TD carbine, so not a total loss.

Question is: Am I not using enough heat or not long enough time in the oven or both? Any experience, ideas or suggestions will be appreciated.

I also did some of the same with Eastwood Orange. I didn't use enough powder, but the size nicely. Those ones are pebbled too. I am gas checking a few and will dust them out at a higher fps, mainly to see if any crud is left in the barrel.
 
I’m no expert but I powder coat slugs, pistol/rifle bullets and buckshot. Everyone has a different methodology it seems. What I found most important is to pick the right powder coat and color. I typically use Eastwood in lime green, medium green, dark blue, and Ford light blue. To me, these coat the best, ymmv.

I do the shake method for coating, just using a #5 plastic container (cottage cheese container type), put in powder, then the raw bullets and shake for a minute) then pour out, shake off the excess powder, stand them up and bake for 20 minutes at 400. I do however, preheat the raw bullets so they are not too hot, but so you can handle them, before I put in the shake container. Since I’ve done that I get uniform coating of powder.

Trial and error but I’m happy with my end product and they pass the smash test with no powder coat flaking off when you hit the coated bullet with a hammer.
 
Not perfect, pour them, knock em out, they sit for a few days, into margarine tub with a teaspoon of powder, shake and flip for a minute, use a trimmed plastic cartridge holder out of factory ammo box to speed up setting them on parchment paper and into the oven.
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I think about what I did, and realize I'm not using enough powder, probably need a bit more heat, and likely a bit more time in the oven. Well, I now have 6 lbs of various powders, so all is not lost - yet! :p

I don't have any cast bullets made that aren't lubed, so my first step will be to cast a bunch of 9mm with a 6 cavity LEE TL mold. I have lots of various LEE molds, so no problem stocking up with what I can use. I have lots of WW as well.
 
I'm siding with Yomamma on the contamination still on your slugs from previous lubes...and there is no such thing as "too much powder" in your tub so use lots, the excess just falls off the slugs when picked for stand-up.
 
fingers284 said:
I'm siding with Yomamma on the contamination still on your slugs from previous lubes...and there is no such thing as "too much powder" in your tub so use lots, the excess just falls off the slugs when picked for stand-up.
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The slugs were freshly cast, no fingers touched them. I agree with the no such thing as too much powder. I now realize I was not using near enough powder, and maybe not enough heat, plus maybe not quite enough time in the oven. I will take all the good advice and experience shared here and sally forth again on Monday.
 
kjohn said:
The slugs were freshly cast, no fingers touched them. I agree with the no such thing as too much powder. I now realize I was not using near enough powder, and maybe not enough heat, plus maybe not quite enough time in the oven. I will take all the good advice and experience shared here and sally forth again on Monday.
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The powder flows way before 5 minutes in, while the oven is still trying to get up to temperature.

Higher temp and longer times ONLY guarantees that the polymers are properly cured

Read the info that came with your powder, I run my oven around 350 F
 
Here's the bullets: Emerald Tool Blue and Eastwood Orange
 

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I run my oven at 400, and I used an oven thermometer just to make sure the oven temp reading was correct. my bullets get cooked for 20 minutes, they look fuzzy going in and you can't see the coating when you take the bullets out( eastwood clear) I dump mine into a pail of water right out of the oven. should also mention I put a couple heaping teaspoons of powder into a small tupperware tub along with about a couple hundred bullets and shake for about 30 seconds or so and then dump everything on a tray I made out of mechanics cloth (wire screen) and shake it just a little bit to get the loose powder off. then I stand each bullet up on a piece of baking parchment paper on a baking tray. it works for me.
 
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