When I powdercoat my bullets, I shake them with Airsoft BB's and HF powdercoat, pick them out of the BB's, put them on the aluminum foil in the cold oven, close the door, set it at 400, turn it on and come back in 45 minutes. Done. So, preheating is not necessary in my personal experience.
Some 44 Mags right out of the oven:
DrHess, here's a silly question. Why powdercoat bullets?
In reply to DrBoost :
400 is then the Magic number, and the Powder turn's to a Liquid , I have never seen 'Runs' in an Item so I Guess it adheres to the surface but the Molecular structure changes to form a Liquid ?
there are a couple of Industrial Size coating company's very close to me . when I went there the air was as full of 'Dust' as a fog in the mountains.
and I went just to see if they could Sandblast an Item but Heck I would have thought the price he Quoted would have included the coating Too. Too rich for me.
Home Boy gonna have to do It Hisself.
DrBoost said:DrHess, here's a silly question. Why powdercoat bullets?
My question as well.
Grtechguy said:DrBoost said:DrHess, here's a silly question. Why powdercoat bullets?
My question as well.
Does it function as a lube? I have to imagine it's hell to get out of the rifling?
Jacketed bullets were invented shortly after smokeless powder, roughly 120 years ago now. Non-jacketed bullets ("cast") can only be driven so fast before they will lead up the barrel. You lube them and even add a "gas check" which is a copper or aluminum little cap on the bottom as well to minimize barrel leading, but after a certain point, a cast bullet is just going to lead up the barrel on you if you drive it too hard, a point under 2K FPS. Smokeless powder pushed the bullets faster than they could manage. The solution was to jacket the bullet with copper. Then you could drive them up to around 4K FPS before you start having other problems. The advantage of a cast bullet is that it is CHEAP. Real Cheap. I have basically nothing in those bullets above but my time. If I bought a jacketed bullet equivalent of those, they would run me somewhere around a quarter each, maybe more. Now, the Desert Eagle I shoot those in does not like cast bullets. At all. It has the same type of rifling as a Glock, "Micro" something or other, and even at lower velocities it is said to lead up bad, possibly screwing up the gas system as well. In the past couple years, people discovered that if you powder coat your cast bullets, you can drive them almost as hard as a jacketed bullet without leading problems. The powder coat bonds on really well. It doesn't come off in the barrel. I have dug them out of my tree stump target back stop and they are still 100% powder coated. You can take one of those bullets, put it on the vice, smash it flat with the BFH and the powder coating sticks. I load up 300 BO in an AR, also gas operated like the DE, without any problems. Here's a writeup on it.
Powdercoated bullets are like fluorescent golf balls, it makes it easier to find them for reuse later 
Ashyukun said:In reply to curtis73 :
That’s actually an interesting idea... I could probably wire in a 110v electric space heater in place of the heating elements in the (220v) stove I already have, and possibly even use its thermostat to control it...
Most old-school electric ovens use a mechanical thermostat switch. Its just an electric switch behind the knob with a copper capillary tube. Since the knob just controls a switch that clicks on and off with temperature, you could wire it with nearly any voltage. You should be able to stick the capillary tube in the tank and mount the switch to the outside somewhere. Run the black wire through the contacts on the stat, plug it in, and then...........
Dr. Hess said:Jacketed bullets were invented shortly after smokeless powder, roughly 120 years ago now. Non-jacketed bullets ("cast") can only be driven so fast before they will lead up the barrel. You lube them and even add a "gas check" which is a copper or aluminum little cap on the bottom as well to minimize barrel leading, but after a certain point, a cast bullet is just going to lead up the barrel on you if you drive it too hard, a point under 2K FPS. Smokeless powder pushed the bullets faster than they could manage. The solution was to jacket the bullet with copper. Then you could drive them up to around 4K FPS before you start having other problems. The advantage of a cast bullet is that it is CHEAP. Real Cheap. I have basically nothing in those bullets above but my time. If I bought a jacketed bullet equivalent of those, they would run me somewhere around a quarter each, maybe more. Now, the Desert Eagle I shoot those in does not like cast bullets. At all. It has the same type of rifling as a Glock, "Micro" something or other, and even at lower velocities it is said to lead up bad, possibly screwing up the gas system as well. In the past couple years, people discovered that if you powder coat your cast bullets, you can drive them almost as hard as a jacketed bullet without leading problems. The powder coat bonds on really well. It doesn't come off in the barrel. I have dug them out of my tree stump target back stop and they are still 100% powder coated. You can take one of those bullets, put it on the vice, smash it flat with the BFH and the powder coating sticks. I load up 300 BO in an AR, also gas operated like the DE, without any problems. Here's a writeup on it.
Interesting. I'm amazing that the powder stays on the bullets all the way through the barrel, let alone still being there when you dig it out of your victim ;)
GTXVette said:In reply to DrBoost :
400 is then the Magic number, and the Powder turn's to a Liquid , I have never seen 'Runs' in an Item so I Guess it adheres to the surface but the Molecular structure changes to form a Liquid ?
there are a couple of Industrial Size coating company's very close to me . when I went there the air was as full of 'Dust' as a fog in the mountains.
and I went just to see if they could Sandblast an Item but Heck I would have thought the price he Quoted would have included the coating Too. Too rich for me.
Home Boy gonna have to do It Hisself.
400 is plenty. Most powders cure at a lower temp. Most of what I have is 350-375, So I pre-bake (de-gas) at about 425 and cure everything at about 375.
The Harbor Freight powder I use says 400 on the label, so that's what I set the oven at. I've checked the oven thermostat versus my (HF) IR Pyrometer and it is right on.
Some guys use the yellow powder, but from my reading, most seem to use the red and have good results. I certainly do. Ya'll should see a 44 Magnum loaded up with those. It looks like a tube of lipstick.
you can get away with a bit of fudgery in powdercoating, I have coated larger items that don't fit in my toaster oven by heating them to 450F with a heatgun and then spraying them and the heat soak on the part is enough to cure the powder. Dont use propane or gas oven, the combustion isnt clean enough and will contaminate the powder. You could probably build a big cabinet out of some fiberglass that can hold heat for 15 minutes and heat it with a heat gun.
Larger items like motorcycle frames I would heat the whole thing piping hot with a tiger torch and spray away, let it cure open to air. However doing it this way make sure there is no moisture or soot on the metal. I don't find a big difference in durability vs actually letting it cure for 15 mins in the oven.
DeadSkunk said:This forum is great for off-the-wall thinking. So bear with me here. If an electric smoker works, could a gas fired BBQ type of device do it? My BBQ will hit 500 degrees pretty easily. It wouldn't be that hard to build an indirect fired unit if direct fired bothered the powdercoat for some reason I don't understand.
Theres a Weber setup now that can even control the temp remotely. I dont see why it couldn't be adapted. Edit- canoe!
I have a Bradley electric smoker and while the gauge goes to 400+ I think, it can hardly go over 220F. If you get it to this temperature and you open the door, you lose a lot of heat. The temperature goes back to 150-ish. While this is perfectly good for smoking, it might not cut it when curing powdercoat.
In reply to ErikMartin :
Could I use that set-up to powder coat a canoe?
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