Is anyone else using Hi Tek bullet coating?

[FWest]

Figured I would pass along what I'm going to try. After looking into the HT coating and spending too much time reading online I decided to try tumble coating with Harbor Freight powder coat.

Cheap red powder, $6 a pound , $5 for a used toaster oven and a cool whip plastic tub. Some non stick foil and hardware cloth. This will be for pistol bullets. Will post back after.

 

[asp]

Powder coating works, and shoots well, but adds thickness (much more than Hi Tek). I bent the handle on my Star (3/8" steel) sizing powdercoated bullets. If you haven't already found it, take a gander at this monster thread:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?171403-Powder-Coating-Boolits&highlight=powdercoat

I sent my mom on a yardsale hunt and got my toaster oven for $2 for the Hi-Tek. Doesn't need to be pretty, just needs to hit 375.

$/bullet, Hi-Tek wins. Don't get me wrong FWwest, It'll work, and good luck. Powdercoat works best with the ionized system, though.

 

[FWest]

When I said spent to much time reading online=castboolits . That is the place that talks about the method I mentioned. I figure if the tumble does not work well enough will by the machine. Just need to get eating the cool whip

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

Powder coat does work well with the gun set up. Tumble is proving to be a cool option too. I think hi-tek does have it beat hands down.
The nice thing with hi-tek is the bullets stay dry once dried. They don't stick to foil or to the pan and eachother. You can work much faster with less care with the hi-tek.
I hate standing bullets up one by one and powder coating or making sure they're not touching on the pan. Not fun.

 

[FWest]

I have no reason to doubt your opinion of the coatings but cost plays into the picture. For less than twenty now I can see if coating is something I want to continue with or return to the other methods.

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

Sorry if I came off the wrong way. I didn't mean to discourage the use of PC. I did he same thing you're planning on. I used PC to see if I liked the whole bullet coating idea then once I figured out it rocks I switched the hi-tek.
Keep us posted on how the tumble PC works out for you.

 

[dcmdon]

I've been buying commercially coated bullets. They are $215 for 3500 bullets shipped. I can't complain about that.

They are as clean on my reloading equipment as FMJs. I would not use anything else.

 

[asp]

I've been buying commercially coated bullets. They are $215 for 3500 bullets shipped. I can't complain about that.

They are as clean on my reloading equipment as FMJs. I would not use anything else.

At a 200 gr bullet, that's 100 lbs of lead. These days, that's barely turning a profit for whoever your supplier is. What are your plans for when that resource falls apart?

 

[dcmdon]

I'm sorry. I was talking 9mm bullets.

I buy case quantities of his 200 gr SWC bullets. In that case its $205 for 2250 bullets, including shipping.

The boxes always weigh 69 lbs. His case quantities are set so it will just barely make the 70 lb max for USPS flat rate boxes.

Don

 

[FWest]

Got stared today on some cool whip tumble coat.

The test batch, fresh from the mold-



The coating method-



$5 oven in use-



First batch cooling-



They do look pretty good to me , we will see how they shoot tomorrow hopefully.

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

They look awesome man.
I'm going to have to try that just for the heck of it.
Good to have some powder on hand if I can get a hold of some hi-tek at any point.
Did you coat twice? How did you handle them? Tweezers? One guy on the castboolits forum said he rubbed some powder on his fingers before he picked up the bullets and it helped from removing powder the bullets during the handling process.

 

[FWest]

Thanks, one coat of HF red is all. To set them up I used small needle nose pliers. The ones that have a spring that force them open. Tried to only touch the nose.

 

[FWest]

Well I went to the range yesterday and shot 100, Lee TL356-124 2R loaded with Titegroup. Sized .357 with a Lee push through. That is the same load I use for jacketed. No leading or feeding issues. Decent accuracy for the SC XD9 I was shooting.

I see this catching on with most pistol shooters who try it. Now to try a 45 ACP.

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

Woohoo.
Awesome man.

 

[dcmdon]

That looks really great.

To state the obvious, I don't see the appeal to this if you are buying bullets. Just buy coated bullets.

But if you roll your own, this is really great. I love my factory coated bullets. I've resisted casting because i don't want to load bare lead.

Don

 

[asp]

At the very least, I hope to see these types of tumble lubing make the Lee Liquid Allox be obsolete. No one likes a sticky bullet.

 

[dcmdon]

Thats what she said. (sorry)

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

I think tumble lubing with 45-45-10 or lee alox is ok for the availability and cost mainly.
It's not really any easier to use and cost wise the hi-tek really isn't much more expensive considering it makes cast replace plated bullets, where 45-45-10 doesn't step up performance at all.
Getting plated performance at cast cost is awesome.

 

[asp]

That last part is what sets this apart. The process isn't very different but the result is so much better.

 

[duarteus]

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

Awesome! I love it.
A buddy had issues with leading in his 9mm. He ran a bunch of my hi-tek 124 RN through his gun and it cleaned the barrel all up.
Nice stuff.

 

[duarteus]

Same here.

55gr 105gr 124gr 230gr .. Cast with some range lead and PC soon after.Not having lead problem on barrel of my Ruger SR9c, CZ99,1911 and Hi-Point Soon to test it on my .223 Bolt rifle ,and ARs

- - - Updated - - -

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[Gammon]

I have been casting and shooting lead bullets for a long time. My experience has been that using the industrial standard alloy (92/6/2) will produce a bullet that will not lead the barrel excessively as long as velocities are kept under 1100 fps.

Shooting lead bullets may make it necessary to scrub your barrel on a regular basis. I am now involved in this process as I am shooting a supply of 4000 "bad" bullets cast from an inferior alloy. These bullets lead the bore to the point that accuracy is a problem after about 200 rounds, sometimes less. Despite these problems, I would much rather shoot lead bullets and deal with the barrel fouling than go through the labor intensive process of coating them.

PS Those of you interested in coating might try molybdenum disulfide powder (AKA "Moly Powder $40/oz} on your barrel, not your bullets. I have found that this treatment drastically reduces leading. The downside is that it only lasts about 300 rounds/400 tops and must be applied to a squeaky clean barrel.

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

I use a much softer alloy with my traditionally lubed bullets with no issues at all.
It only has about 1% tin and 1.5% antimony.
The messy part for me is the lube that ends up all over the guns and my hands.
Tumble lubing with 45-45-10 stops some of this but not all.

You should try the hi-tek. It's very very easy to use and there is less labor that dealing with traditional lube. If your mold drops at the right size and you don't need to size the bullets then it's even better.
I can coat thousands of bullets in about 30 minutes. It's as easy to coat 100 as it is to coat 1000.

The only issue I have had with leading was in 40, no matter what alloy or diameter bullet etc. I think it's due to the throat being a small diameter than the grooves in that gun. Almost like having undersized cylinder throats. Can't cure that without reaming it out.

 

[asp]

View attachment 106229View attachment 106230

Looks good. If you're up for experimenting, try a small batch without gas checks. I've heard coated bullets don't need to be checked but I haven't tried any coated bullets at rifle speeds yet.

I have been casting and shooting lead bullets for a long time. My experience has been that using the industrial standard alloy (92/6/2) will produce a bullet that will not lead the barrel excessively as long as velocities are kept under 1100 fps.

Shooting lead bullets may make it necessary to scrub your barrel on a regular basis. I am now involved in this process as I am shooting a supply of 4000 "bad" bullets cast from an inferior alloy. These bullets lead the bore to the point that accuracy is a problem after about 200 rounds, sometimes less. Despite these problems, I would much rather shoot lead bullets and deal with the barrel fouling than go through the labor intensive process of coating them.

PS Those of you interested in coating might try molybdenum disulfide powder (AKA "Moly Powder $40/oz} on your barrel, not your bullets. I have found that this treatment drastically reduces leading. The downside is that it only lasts about 300 rounds/400 tops and must be applied to a squeaky clean barrel.

You don't want any leading. Gas bullets that are properly fit to the gun can be shot for thousands of rounds before cleaning the gun and even then it's usually traditional bullet lube that gums up the action, not accuracy degrading due to barrel leading.

Have you read about what's involved in coating the bullets? It's not very 'labor intensive' at all. If anything, it seems like the "lazy" option. Scrubbing a barrel is extremely labor intensive in my opinion.

$40/oz of something that's good for 300 rounds, how much does it take to coat the barrel each time? Or $68 for something that can coat ~130k bullets...

Not that arguing on the internet is going to solve anything, but I very much disagree with your logic path. I think you could be saving yourself a lot of trouble with very little added effort.

 

[Gammon]

Looks good. If you're up for experimenting, try a small batch without gas checks. I've heard coated bullets don't need to be checked but I haven't tried any coated bullets at rifle speeds yet.


You don't want any leading. Gas bullets that are properly fit to the gun can be shot for thousands of rounds before cleaning the gun and even then it's usually traditional bullet lube that gums up the action, not accuracy degrading due to barrel leading.

Have you read about what's involved in coating the bullets? It's not very 'labor intensive' at all. If anything, it seems like the "lazy" option. Scrubbing a barrel is extremely labor intensive in my opinion.

$40/oz of something that's good for 300 rounds, how much does it take to coat the barrel each time? Or $68 for something that can coat ~130k bullets...

Not that arguing on the internet is going to solve anything, but I very much disagree with your logic path. I think you could be saving yourself a lot of trouble with very little added effort.

My mistake, I meant $40 per pound for the moly powder. If you use the proper lube it will not cause any problems. I have cast many hundreds of thousands of bullets and have never had a problem with the lube. My molds throw a bullet that must be resized so they get lubed at the same time. Since the luber/sizer runs at 4000 bullets per hour, this is no problem. They are then ready to shoot. I can't see making this process any more involved. Scrubbing the bore is no big deal.

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

yeah i agree, properly lubed and sized is never an issue.
i like to shoot a decent amount though, and after 400 or 500 rounds of traditionally lubed bullet through a revolver everything is covered in lube residue.
it cleans up easy, and i enjoy cleaning my guns but this hi-tek is just like shooting plated as far as thats concerned.
also if you use ruble lubed, or shoot bullets as cast and unsized you can tumble and bake this stuff on by the thousands and it's super fast.
1 minutes or less for tumbling and 15 minutes in the oven. cool then do it again.
i love it for the tumble lube 9 mm that i'm not sizing anyway. super fast.

let me know if you would like to try some. i can ship some your way.

 

[38ExtraSpecial]

In the spirit of the upcoming cast bullets seminar I figure I would do a little update here.
We're giving away 2 door prizes of this coating. Each pack being able to coat 30,000 projectiles or more.

I wanted to update the thread because since my last posts I've been able to try it in 357 mag with 160 ish SWC and 15 grains of 296 and also 14 grains of 2400 with great accuracy and a clean bore.
Also in 44 mag with 250 SWC with max loads of unique and universal and damn near max with 2400. Now I know they're not crazy loads in 44 with those powders, but the velocity was all of 1100 fps and the pressures are pretty high still. No leading and again accurate enough for what I can do with a revolver.

If you're casting and haven't tried this stuff yet you're missing out big time.
If you're a local caster I'll get you a couple samples of coated bullets if you like. Shoot me a PM


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[NavelOfficer]

There's a fella out west that offers coated bullets reasonable. Can't say what coating he uses exactly.
I've been using his 6.5mm 150gr GCTC, .310" 170gr GCSil, .313" 200gr GCSP and .323" 180gr GCFP and have been quite satisfied. Don't have a working chrony, but I am going super-sonic I'm quite sure.
All but 6.5 pictured below.
PM me for details; you can buy in 100 count lots. ($10.60, $11.10, $12.05 and $11.40 respectively). Sorry, nothing in .50 caliber.

 

[Gammon]

If Hi tech could get the coating/baking process down to one pass I would be interested. My luber/sizer is simply too fast and easy to ignore. 4000 rounds per hour for high quality ready to shoot heads.