Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Powder Coat in AR?

Just traded into a .300 Blackout barrel, thinking about low-cost practice bullets. Any issues with using PC bullets in one? Thinking 115 to 135 gr at about 2400 fps.

PC is fine, but you'll want to still use copper gas checks unless you like cleaning lead out of the bolt carrier and gas key. The aluminum gas checks can suffer from gas cutting when they pass the gas port, and bare powder coated bullet bases do the same thing.

Thank you, just the information I needed.

I had really good accuracy using the Ranch Dog 165gr LFP dry tumbled PC'd at 1700fps in my PSA 300BLK. I had better accuracy without gas checks but YMMV.

Thanks, Dinny

I have hear good things about that bullet. Sometimes the cause of worse accuracy with checks can be gas checks coming off in flight, or if they were not seated straight. (One of the few downsides of powder coating is that it makes the gas check shank larger diameter, and more likely to shave coating and lead on one side when seating gas checks.) It can be hard to tell if checks are coming off though unless you can find either the gas checks on the ground or recover the bullets. Of course sometimes certain bullets just shoot better without gas checks.

Specific to the AR: just FYI you'll need to put some effort into cleaning out the piston area and gas key in your bolt carrier if you shoot many full power rounds without gas checks. Also be aware that a mid-weight bullet like that, run at full power, is a sure fire method of making the rifle overgassed. That 300 Blk AR15 system is designed around light weight full power bullets at high pressure, and heavy slow bullets at low pressure so that dwell time vs port pressure is balanced right; mid to heavy bullets at high pressure still have longer dwell time than the light bullets, but are also at high pressure, so it drives the carrier back a little earlier and harder. You can account for it with gas adjustment, but then it won't run the normal loads. Just food for thought, not telling you there's only one way to do it.

I haven't shot cast bullets as light as the OP mentioned, but I shoot the Lee 160 TL GC water dropped from the mold and coated with HF Red or Eastwood Blue with no gas check and no leading or other issues... I size them at 310.

It's just my personal preference, but I don't care to screw around with gas checks. If I have to do that I'll just shoot jacketed bullets.

Put the gas checks on before coating. I have done them both ways and they go on better if you check and size them before coating. Just make sure you seat the checks before sizing. Most people don't seat their checks. They snap them on and size. And then they wonder why they can't shoot them accurately or they get bad fliers.

I've also coated bullets after gas-checking them, with the same result as coating and then gas-checking. I did it that way because the bases of the bullets were too big after coating, and it was a PITA to get the checks seated straight. The coating adheres to the copper just like it does the lead. I also coated some bullets that I'd already sized and checked, to bump them up a couple thousandths of an inch in diameter. That turned out fine as well. Coating covers a lot of sins, and is a great tool for solving lots of problems.