Some cast boolits guys are powder coating their boolits

[Tyler Durden]

Yeah, like how your clothes washer and dryer gets painted back at the factory.  An electrostatic spray gun puffs pigmented particles at the boolits which are on a tray.  The tray has a ground wire clamped to it.  Then the boolits get baked in an oven at about 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

That is one method.

The other method is to buy the powder coat, but not the electro static gun.  You then mix in a few tablespoons of powder into some plastic tub with a tablespoon of lacquer thinner, shake it up really well and then tumble your boolits in that.  The boolits are then spread on a wire mesh trash, shaken a little bit to get off the excess colored liquid.  They are allowed to set for a little while so the lacquer thinner can evaporate off.  Next, they are put into an oven just like with traditionally powder coated parts.

That tumbling method is called the "piglet" method, after the screenname of the guy who came up with it.

It seems like the next best thing since sliced bread.

Some guys are saying they are able to push .308 cast boolits to jacketed bullets velocities.  If that is true, WOW!   

Just doing a quick image google search I found these:



Boolits recovered from the back berm after having been shot, showing that the powder coating is still intact:



Some .300 Blackout ammo, maybe one color for the sub sonics and another color for the super sonics:



It is all still very new, and people all over or experimenting with powder coating boolits and making advances all the time.  The mother of all powder coated boolit threads is here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?171403-Powder-Coating-Boolits

The piglet method is described here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?202316-HFPC-Boolits-Piglet-Method

I just figured I would help out some of my fellow Down Range forum members.  If anything, keep this in the back of your mind for when the next ammo panic comes.

[Magoo541]

I have been looking at getting into casting my own.  This may just be the final straw.  Thanks for posting! 

[TAB]

Powder coating metals at a pretty low temp.   I wonder how it would foul a barrel and how bad it would be to breath the vaporized particals.   

[Tyler Durden]

The place to look....which I haven't yet... is the .300 Blackout talk forums:

http://www.300blktalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=84219

I reckon those guys are shooting their cast boolits which have been powder coated, through a suppressor.  If there isn't a whole bunch of red or green gunk or whatever color gunk in the suppressor, it should be good to go.

Other guys over at the cast boolit forums will give their boolits the hammer test.  If they smack the boolit real hard, so it flattens, and the coating is still intact, they are guaranteed they have good adhesion.

One guy even, if I recall correctly, took a torch to one of his boolits.  The lead melted and dribbled out of the powder coat "jacket" which didn't fail first.

[TAB]

Most powder coat is just plastic.  When it gets hot it turns diffrent colors.

[Sponsor]

[Tyler Durden]

Hey, check out these bad boys!



Those are .30 cal boolits.

Don't know weight, or if he is making his own gas checks.

Which reminds me, the clever folks over at cast boolits figured out how to make their own gas checks, sometimes using dies which screw into a single stage press...but get this.... using the aluminum from soda or beer cans.  for a while there those new aluminum bud light bottles were the best because their aluminum was just the right thickness.

[Tyler Durden]

Most powder coat is just plastic.  When it gets hot it turns diffrent colors.

Yeah, in reality, powder coating your own boolits at home is not all that different from the moly/poly coated boolits manufacturers like Precision, Bear Creek, and Black Bullets International.

http://www.precisionbullets.com/IMG/bullet1.jpg

[TAB]

Its alot diffrent actually.  Diffrent material, diffrent process, no health standards or liabilty...

[Tyler Durden]

How do you know so much about the black moly/poly coated bullets?

[Tyler Durden]

Well, where did TAB go?

<crickets chirping>