Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting i love purty colors

41magnum, 265 grain with the slovenian mould

Pretty but the diameter looks a tad small for a real handgun.

sooner or later i am going to chrony some of those through some marlin levers. I have a 45colt lever but have never chron'd a load through it.
I think it is comparable at least to a 38.55 in reality or maybe more.

Ooh, red white and blue, and ... army green?

Mixing colors gets interesting too, just for fun. Certain combinations don't bind to each other as well so the coating can be weak, but if they're all the same brand it can have some neat results.

The most unexpected result I got was from mixing some bright red (like yours) with some bright green, kind of a Kawasaki green or zombie green - it made a mottled olive drab, but looking real close you could still see the separate green and red.

i have consistently gotten a velocity increase of 110-170 fps with powder coating. .30, .452, 454, .458, .41,.44, .357. are the cals i coat.
i use white for powder puff loads, yellow for mid range and red for lull power loads. makes it easy on an old phart to get the right load for the use.
i have also gained accuracy in the 458's and the and the 454's in the heavier weights.

Color coding for different loads is a good idea; I do the same. I use blue for subsonic loads and green for the full power stuff. It sure makes it easy to pick up a mag and know which loads are in it.

I have done the same with my 45 Colt loads while working up my loads.

Did my first batch for the Mosin. Haven't shot them yet, but the batch I did for the 357 shot well...

Lookin good.

Just FYI, those aluminum gas checks are fine in bolt actions, but don't work as well in gas operated rifles; the aluminum checks are gas cut more easily than copper as they pass the gas port. You won't notice anything in the bore, but it makes accuracy pretty poor when that happens.

the mosin, i have never accumulated enough reloadable brass to do those. I did buy a lot of the milsurp when it was relatively cheap.
And some of the rifles, when they were 50bucks a piece or so. There were some real nice ones that came in from georgia, that were refurbished at one time and set aside. I have a feeling those cast bullets will probably shoot better than the mil surp.

I am about to coat a couple hundred for one of my nephews mosin.

Oh you preening fancyboys, you lethal beauties.

I like them also,

Ronnie

I wish yawl would quit doing that. I am tempted, but so far, am not moved. Get thee behind me satan!!!

No more greasy fingers! I went so far as to remove the lube from a few hundred an PC them.
Ronnie

I see speckles on a few of those, are you mixing colors or is that how the color is made?

I've tried mixing colors a bit, with some very interesting results. Blue and white can make a sort of "denim" look, and lime green with bright red makes a camo-olive drab that's really interesting to look at.
Unfortunately mixing usually results in lower performance of the coating though, especially if they are different brands.

the good Lord knows i didn't need to read that having the same idea run through my mine more than once recently. Pretty good looking bullets. those slovenian molds are something aren't they?
the 265 deep hollow point would swallow something.
I have got to throw them at some water jugs.

i particularly like the brown one, and the one that looks like our wash pans with the speckle in them.

Rather than retype all this again here is a link to where I posted the colors on singleactions,
http://singleactions.proboards.com/thread/16911/wheel-weights
The speckled ones are from switching colors and not cleaning out the tumbler completely.
All the powder is from powder by the pound.
Ronnie

Rather than retype all this again here is a link to where I posted the colors on singleactions,
http://singleactions.proboards.com/thread/16911/wheel-weights
The speckled ones are from switching colors and not cleaning out the tumbler completely.
All the powder is from powder by the pound.
Ronnie

My method of removing lube to PC some bullets,
Hot water is your friend!
I did some commercial cast a couple months ago.
All done outside on the gas cooker, used an old 10-12 quart pot and an old metal colander.
Place bullets in colander, colander in the pot, cover with water and heat slowly till it comes to a low boil, skim the lube off the surface as it comes up, I let mine boil about 10 minutes.
Remove and dump on an old towel to dry, then just to be safe rinse in acetone.
Then PC as usual.
Ronnie

Ronnie, whur bouts in south, Mississippi are you? I'm in that neck of the woods every now and then, maybe we could meet for coffee and talk about the Free State of Jones. I still have friends there and see them occasionally. I still hunt in Middleton down below Meridian, and in Louin near Bay Springs, and between Vaiden and Killmichael on the Big Black River in northwest, Mississippi. My friends there all cast bullets and reload. Some of them have all their teeth and wear shoes too.

Simpson county, close to Magee. Got most of my teeth and even own a couple pair of shoes!
Ronnie

I love southern jokes. i like texas jokes, but southern stereotypes are good.
I am married to a woman whos people came to texas in the 1840's. prior to that georgia.
I love to tease her about dueling banjo's and her relatives.
squeal like a pig.
now the day came when i was in a hospital waiting room while she was in taking care of her mother who was dieing, and the cousins walked in. All about 5ft five, shoulders about that wide, big meathooks/arms/all with boots and stetsons on, giving me the stinkeye, "who are you boy?" "oh you must be the one that married Anna Mae" i thought for a while i was gonna meet my maker that day. i kid her brother, since we have been married over 40 years now, at the 30 year mark he finally started talking to me, rather than one word sentences.
nobody down there has one name, it's roy bob, billy, jerry lee, jimmy lee, etc. I get confused at family gettothers.
Her great gramma was at atlanta when the yankee sherman burned it.
Small issue these days, maybe not so much at the time, my great grand relative was in shermans army when they burned atlanta.
makes for good discussions.

the funny part too is i was in some outlying rough part of arizona last fall with one of her grandson's, and had to explain to him what i meant when i said in that area a favorite expression was squeal like a pig. City boy.
i should say this is topic drift but it's funny to me. My family from those days looked like the hatfied and mccoys. Having run to virginia to escape hanging by the british, later at end of 1700's hawkins cty tennes., boonsborogh, kentucky and so on. Hillbilly comes to mind. And in a wide since we are interrelated to the boone family as one of mine married one of his daughters. So I figure i can make jokes about the relatives.

i have a friend who lives about ten minutes according to him from kentucky, he in w virginia. Says they make good beverages in the hills around there. Have to get back there.
some mexican invaded my camp trailer, and drank the last bottle of shine i had, came from billy carters supplier, according to the guy i bought it from in georgia.

All my wife's people are from Simpson County west of Magee almost to Pinola. All of the old folks are dead now and we don't get over there very often. In fact, it's been 20 years since we've been there. Pretty country out that way though. Lotta places to hunt, fish, and shoot. Dam sho off the beaten path. But I don't want to be there this time of the year until about mid October. Just a little warm and muggy for me and I was born in Gulfport and raised just north of there in Orange Grove. But I never liked that dam hot, humid weather and still don't.

i am going to show that post to my wife, she thinks i am bad. few years ago had a client pass away, wife said he had a bunch of lead ingoted in the back yard, did i want to buy it? sure, so i went to the back yard in about a foot of weeds found ingot after ingot scattered all over the yard. he would reduce the wheelweights and pour into what ever was handy, then pitch it out into the back yard. It did weigh down the truck.
i have a thing for 41, but don't have that many cast, i probably should start doing it since it's about 115 outside right now.

I cast those back in March and April, no intention of casting or smelting like that again till late fall. Maybe a few hundred at a time. It's a mite muggy here in Mississippi.
Ronnie

i did learn something today by going over to that single action forum. How to make a "rice" load. i can think of applications for that.

Way off topic, but here is something I've been working on, snake/rat loads,
Short ones are 45 colt, longer ones are 357 max,

3-4 grains HS6, card wad over powder, fill with shot and crimp.
Ronnie

What do you use to make that crimp?

Hornady blank dies,
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/11...oy-action-blank-22-to-45-caliber-handgun
They are a bit rough on the brass, they'd be good for a batch of brass you were going to toss because you had used them up.
Ronnie

Interesting, thanks for the info.

FYI on the 45 colt shotshells - you can cut down 444 Marlin brass to cylinder length if you want extra shot capacity. It can work, although I struggled with case setback with some loads. YMMV

That crimp method is one way to do it but it usually results in blown patterns of the shot because the soft lead deforms as it is pushed through the harder brass case to open it up upon firing. But it does work, especially with the larger cartridge cases like 44 and 45. Another way to do it is use gas checks as your over the powder wad and then over the end with a little roll crimp to hold it in place. I have had to use that method when I ran out of shot cups.

But the best shot cartridges, by that I mean those that hold the most shot and have the best patterns, are those made with the plastic shot cups. At least, they have been the most effective for me anyway. Last year, on the first trip into camp in late August after having not been there since April, I killed seven cotton mouths in about 10 minutes at the very first bridge over a little slough on the way into camp.

It's always interesting to see how different people solve problems or make things that work. That is what is so cool about reloading and why I like to hang out with you boys. Yawl are always coming up with stuff that is neat and interesting. I am absolutely humbled by some of the stuff yawl do.

Ron, I have a lot of Lazer Cast, Leadhead, and some other cast bullets.. When I shoot any of them in my pistols, I get some leading will this coating eliminate that?

Yes, completely. That might sound "too good to be true" but it's the truth.

Thanks.. I will have to locate some of this stuff..

What is the name of the process to coat the lead that colors it ?

I have never seen that before - wow...

Powder coating.

There are different ways to do it. You can use an electrostatic powder coating gun, like a powder coating shop would do. Or you can shake the bullets in a tub with a small amount of powder, then bake them. It is relatively simple; I posted directions here somewhere a while back.