Painted bullets

[richhodg66]

I don't powder coat and likely never will. No one thus far has presented a compelling enough case that it is either better or cheaper than what I'm doing now, so I'll get that out of the way.

Been observing some threads on a facebook page about casting where some guy is actually spray painting his bullets, ordinary Rustoleum paint and a few others and says he is getting good results. Sounds crazy to me, but has anyone tried this? Is this really the next fad? I just cannot see this being a workable and good thing. FWIW, he was shooting all of his through semiauto pistols.

 

[Joshua]

Having not tried it myself I cannot speak to the efficacy of spray-painted bullets. But I expect that with 45 auto or 38 special low pressure loads, you can get away with almost anything that separates the lead from the barrel. I wonder how rifle bullets would do at 2100 to 2300 ft./s. Maybe not so good.

 

[richhodg66]

I know there are paints out there for high temp automotive use that are supposed to be baked at a few hundred degrees to cure, maybe something like that, but I can't see ordinary home use spray paint like that even holding up to being seated in a case, let alone shot.

Seems like spray paint and cast bullets have been around long enough that someone would have figured out it worked and it would be a wide spread practice by now if it actually worked.

 

[JonB]

I believe I seen the same posts. There were like ten threads started all in the same FB Group ...all were by same guy. He mentioned baking them in one or two of the threads, but not all of them. Each thread was a different type/brand of spray paint. He posted no detailed shooting results, other than to say, they work and don't lead the barrel. If I were to guess, I'd say he is trolling that group with BS. If you look at "all" his painted bullets, you will see they were sprayed while the bullets were stood on end, so NONE of the bases were painted. Does that matter? IDK?

 

[Rick H]

I tried spray painting 40 S&W cast bullets with VHT gloss black paint that was recommended by someone on some board or other. It left a gooey black sludge in the barrel that was worse than leading to clean. Evidently the ride down the barrel is a lot harder on paint than a year or so on race car headers.

 

[richhodg66]

I figured it was probably BS. I started looking in on a few reloading pages on it about a year ago and it is unbelieveable the level of stupidity that exists out there. I wasn't even about to attempt it, lube works just fine, I wondered if there was any validity to it or not.

 

[Brad]

Powder coating has been around long enough to have a history of success. Ido t see spray paint as a real improvement other than not needing to baked. The dry time is certainly as long or longer than a bake cycle so it isn’t “faster”.

PC also builds up 1-2 thou thick, that is a lot of paint!

 

[CZ93X62]

I figured it was probably BS. I started looking in on a few reloading pages on it about a year ago and it is unbelieveable the level of stupidity that exists out there. I wasn't even about to attempt it, lube works just fine, I wondered if there was any validity to it or not.

I have no idea how good or bad spray-painting bullets might be. Powder-coating is a different matter, its effectiveness has been proven to my satisfaction, due to the work of the folks here. That said, I likely won't try it. I am happy with sized/lubed bullets for my general usage.

The Facebook groups' "stupidity" seems to be a blending of new hobbyist inexperience with a re-hash of long-lasting misinformation that has been around for decades concerning bullet casting and shooting.

 

[358156 hp]

I tried spray painting 40 S&W cast bullets with VHT gloss black paint that was recommended by someone on some board or other. It left a gooey black sludge in the barrel that was worse than leading to clean. Evidently the ride down the barrel is a lot harder on paint than a year or so on race car headers.

These are the same results I heard, several years back. There were issues with the paint transfering to the bore. Wiederlader in Germany experimented with a 2K epoxy paint with hexagonal boron nitride added with apparent success.

 

[fiver]

Dan over to Mountain molds done an extensive write up on some sort of epoxy at high velocity he was working with Just before he left Idaho.
AIRC his bullet was a light weight cone to a point wad cutter looking thing, and the epoxy was white.
if his website is still up you could probably find those threads.

 

[Michael]

My wife does not allow me to paint.

 

[Rockydoc]

I can’t see any advantage of spray painting over shake and bake powder coating, which is really easy, and has already proven techniques. No need to reinvent the wheel.