The bright red ones are powder coated and the other two are Hi-Tek.
Are gas checks necessary for coated Magnum loads?
- Thread starter U.S.SFC_RET
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How easy is it? No it's not grammar? Hi Tek coated not Harbor Freight Powder Painted
Fine Figure of a Man
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Coated bullets don't work in every gun regardless of velocity, my BHP is one of them.
The lead or cut of the rifling I think.
The lead or cut of the rifling I think.
Size of bullet, size of throats if applicable, size of leade, velocity, powder used. In other words, things that would cause an issue.
Good question as well.
Maybe the the plastic water jugs "stripped" the coating?
Out of a gazillion Hi Tec coated bullets shot, are we concerned about one or two ?? Powder coated, I can not speak to as those are a different animal and usually home brewed. I have smashed the snoot out of coated bullets and torched them with a propane torch and they fared very well
As I wait for Hurricane Irma, maybe I will go out in the garage and torture some more.
Out of a gazillion Hi Tec coated bullets shot, are we concerned about one or two ?? Powder coated, I can not speak to as those are a different animal and usually home brewed. I have smashed the snoot out of coated bullets and torched them with a propane torch and they fared very well
As I wait for Hurricane Irma, maybe I will go out in the garage and torture some more.
Good questions and I will reply as best I can at the moment. When I initially did the test I didn't measure leades or throats since I merely wanted to see how the coating held up. The original thread is here: https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/powder-coated-bullet-retention-test-pics.787043/
The bright red bullets are .452 200gr. Powder used IIRC was Bullseye (known to soften powder coat over time). Velocity was around 1,089 FPS, fired from a USC rifle.
The dark red bullet is also .452, but 230gr. It was most likely fired from a 1911 using Unique powder, but I only discovered it laying on the ground while I was shooting, so I can't be sure of the details.
It would appear I posted the same bullet twice. The third bullet, now corrected is a .401 175gr fired from an AMT Javelina at 1,419 FPS.
I will have to measure the throats and leade of the guns the bullets were fired from as soon as I can get a chance to do so.
Since it keeps getting asked, the bright red is Harbor Freight powder coat and the other two are Hi-Tek. See post #26.
Again, the point of the pictures was to show that the surface of the coating does indeed get compromised during firing
I'm not sure what you mean about being concerned about one or two. These were all I recovered from my somewhat limited testing. I have no reason to believe that more samples would not result in the same appearance.Maybe the the plastic water jugs "stripped" the coating?
Out of a gazillion Hi Tec coated bullets shot, are we concerned about one or two ?? Powder coated, I can not speak to as those are a different animal and usually home brewed. I have smashed the snoot out of coated bullets and torched them with a propane torch and they fared very well
As I wait for Hurricane Irma, maybe I will go out in the garage and torture some more.
The jugs/water do seem to have had an effect on the coating covering the front of the bullet but this is not the area of importance. (See above where the dark red one was NOT fired into any water whatsoever.) Most of the surface of a given bullet has no contact with the bore and the area of the bullet that seems to have the greatest impact regarding leading and coatings is the base. If you refer to the other thread, you can see that the coating on the bullet base largely stays intact across a range of velocities (for pistol).
I encourage others to also try to collect more data - it certainly can't hurt. My original thread/test was intended to add some pictorial data for everyone. Unfortunately I didn't have a better way to capture the bullets or to capture more of them.
Schwing
Member
My experience has been that coated bullets completely eliminate leading but do nothing for accuracy. If you have an accurate load for a lead bullet, that same bullet will be accurate if you coat the bullet. Trying to drive them faster or slower will have the same impact on accuracy as it would on a normal lead bullet.
Bullet diameter is the most important factor in a lead free barrel and accuracy for lead bullets. The one thing coating CAN do is add a bit of diameter to bullets if they are undersized.
Bullet diameter is the most important factor in a lead free barrel and accuracy for lead bullets. The one thing coating CAN do is add a bit of diameter to bullets if they are undersized.
AABEN
Member
I have used LEE bullets lube on 357 44 44mag 40mm all with out leading.
All the coated bullets I have used were sized after coating which didn't add anything to the diameter. The only real fix I have reliably found for that is to make and/or size the bullets bigger.
Right.
But, if the bullet is a smidgen too small before sizing, powder coating may bring the diameter up so that the bullet actually gets sized when passed through the sizing die.
But, the powder coating is pretty thin, it won't fix much in the lack of diameter department.
wbbh
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You mean like this?
Or this?
Here's a third:
My point being that the coating does get broken, although it's not likely to cause any problems for high velocity applications (to a point).
Edited to add proper picture.
Exactly!
ArchAngelCD
Member.
None of those bullets look like they were treated with Hi-Tec coating. Look at the third bullet, it's just left over paint.
res45
Member
I just look at bullets that I PC as another form or lube that have a couple of advantages,little to no smoke,cleaner hands and dies as well as better long term storage of bullets in less than ideal conditions. If you have problem with regular lubed bullet PC may or may not cure those issues. As to gas checks I generally find that bullets designed to take a gas check in general shoot better / more accurately with the gas check than not once you pass a certain velocity / load pressure threshold with the alloy used.
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