Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Powder coating quick and easy

Since we've had some discussion of powder coated bullets lately, I thought I'd share this. I posted my process a few years ago, but don't remember the name of the thread. Anyway, I cast and coated a bunch of bullets this weekend, and figured I'd take some more pics.

These are 9mm 105gr hollow point bullets from a Lee mold I modified. I shoot them at 1450 fps from my Glocks, so the coating has to be pretty tough. That doesn't mean it has to take a long time to apply though. The pics below illustrate less than 1 minute of effort on my part (other than taking the pics) for coating, and another 5-8 minutes for separating and sizing about 200 to 250 bullets.

A quick note about powder BTW - not all powders are equal, in fact, none of them are equal, in my experience. Each one behaves slightly differently, even just different colors of the same brand/lineup. The powder below is RAL 6018 Yellow Green from Powder Buy The Pound

About this much powder for one coat; this is roughly 200-250 bullets. Use a plastic recyclable yogurt or sour cream tub.



About what it should look like dumped on the bullets. If you get the quantity right, the bullets will be coated like below, with little or no extra powder left in the tub.



15-20 seconds of shaking by hand, hard. I do mean shake it hard; build up some static in there by swirling the bullets around, and get that powder floating around in the air. If you're holding the tub in one hand, you aren't shaking hard enough.



Dump them out on a tray, doesn't matter if they touch each other. I use a metal screen in the tray to avoid flat spots.



20 minutes bake time in the toaster oven at 400* F (temp varies for different powders). You MUST use a thermometer to verify oven temp. Do this in the garage, not the kitchen.



Separated, ready to size (use a push-through Lee sizer die). Notice the thin or bare spots, and marks from the screen and touching other bullets - those don't matter. These bullets pictured are every bit as accurate as any jacketed bullet in my Glocks, and will chew out the X ring at 10 yards.


Hope that helps!