Powder Coating Instructions are fairly simple.You will need some parchment paper, an empty Mayonnaise jar or butter tub and some used towels or other blanket like stuff. You need a flat piece of cardboard that is folded once in the middle to make a pouring channel for the excess powder. A piece of 3/8" or 1/2" hardware cloth (rabbit wire) cut an inch each way oversized to your wife's cookie sheet is also nice to have too. (you need to be able to shift the loaded wire around some).
Cast your bullets all hot and frosty like you love to do. You can do this weeks in advance, provided you store them unfingered inside a sealed container.
So, from now on put them un-finger printed into a sealed container with your freshly soap and hot water washed and towel dried hands. Make a habit of doing it like this in the future --
you don't want dirty finger prints on the bullets.
Go to the grocery store and buy some PARCHMENT PAPER (sitting next to the waxed paper).
This is a roll of paper that has silicone in it that NOTHING will stick to (you will find other uses for it, too, other than baking)
Take out some old towels or other form of scrap blanket type stuff and cover over your kitchen counter, range top and your kitchen table.
Always remember -- if you spill some powder or drop a dusty bullet on the carpet
a vacuum cleaner right then is the best way to keep the red spots at bay --- uncured powder is a dust, like any other dust. Just suck it up. Don't try to wipe it up with a wet rag or scrub at it -- bad idea that. Put the cat outside as kitty paw prints will multiply like, well, kitty paw prints.
Pre-heat a cup full of bullets to 140 degrees in your wife's oven --- this is about as hot as you can handle with your fresh washed and de-oiled fingers. Mild heat helps the powder to stick and adhere to lead bullets.
Dump them in the Mayo jar, add a large sprinkle of Harbor Freight Red (about a pinky first knuckle deep layer) put the lid on tight and shake it and roll it and shake it for at least 5 minutes before checking on it the first time.
Some speed is needed to get it all moving quick, as the powder will clump up from the heat if you don't keep it moving both ASAP and continuously until you pour it out.
During a check turn the lid off carefully with it sitting on a towel, look inside then put the lid back on and make it move again -- you are looking for a full 100% coverage of adhered red powder --- looks like a consistent layer of red frost at this stage of things. If you don't have the 100% full coating, put the lid back on and shake it some more. When you arms get tired you can roll the mayo jar on the towel sitting at the kitchen table. Thickness of the powder is not important, 100% coverage is what counts.
(yes, people wind up buying a small vibratory bowl just to avoid this workout. They claim that 20 minutes vibrating coats the bullets in a superior fashion)
Parchment paper is laying flat in the baking tray sitting on top of the stove. CHANGE THE OVEN HEAT TO 325 DEGREES. Lay out the cardboard and the rabbit wire beside the baking tray. And yes, I put a towel over the stove as a fumble can happen anywhere you have the bullets or the red powder out of a sealed containter.
When you finish shaking the bullets in the mayo jar (you never stopped, remember) you slowly pour them from the mayo jar into a line on the center of the rabbit wire that is laying on top of the sheet of cardboard. Lift the wire and just by that lifting action jiggle sift the excess powder from off the bullets -- don't beat them up any, just get the excess powder off of top of them. Excess powder goes from cardboard back into the shaker jar (with the lid screwed on tight it has a long shelf life that way).
Center the linear mass of bullets in the middle of the cookie sheet and put the wire hanging over the edges of the baking sheet with the parchment paper underneath it. The wire will sink down until the bullets and the wire hit the parchment paper in the baking sheet. The entire rig is self-centering on the cookie sheet.
If you did this smart you go no red powder on the baking sheet -- if you do get some on it still in the powder state, simply wipe it up with a damp paper towel. If you don't see it until after it goes in the oven and gets melted and cooked, it can still be scraped off with a razor blade or a kitchen knife, so it isn't really fatal to find a bit of red powder on the baking sheet.
But remember your goal is to get away with this without your wife never knowing you did it -- wives are all funny about curing paint inside their oven, you know.
$30 toaster ovens wind up getting bought by the men who get caught using the wife's oven.
Stick the wire and jumbled bullets and the parchment papered baking sheet in the 325 degree oven and give it 10 minutes or until the powder has melted into a flexible, fully covered but not hard coating state. Full temp as listed on the powder coat container and full half hour baking time means a HARD coating, and you want it to remain flexible so you can separate the bullets and then size the bullets afterwards.
Take the bullets out of the oven and verify that the coating has at least jelled good. Let the bullet mass cool until you can touch and handle it. Flip and dump the wire over on to the towel at the kitchen table with some energy and then break the lumped bullets apart with your fingers (you can bang clumps apart on the towel if you need to). You need to do this while they are still quite warm so they will break apart easily. I use a fresh set of white cotton gloves for this step as I keep lots of white cotton gloves around since I always wear them when sleeping due to diabetes/heart/circulatory issues. Side benefit -- I do not have arthritis in my finger joints any at all, which is a good thing seeing that comes with diabetes latter stages.
Mild damage (down to the lead) anywhere other than a driving band (where bullet meets gun bore) is just cosmetic -- jest ignore it. If you have some of such, make a pile for "second coating" if you want to. While you are first learning, a second coat often happens and some guys give up and just do the second coat as routine --- but you can coat bullets with just one thin coat once you get good at this.
You will get past the "looking for cosmetics" stage fairly fast, and get to the "looking for driving band coverage" stage.
I now hold off any eyeballing of bullets until I have done the sizing operation, as many little "imperfections" on driving bands get mushed over and sealed over during the sizing operation as it moves the coating around some as it squeezes the bullet, evening up on the little coating dings on the bands quite nicely. It also removes any jumble break up marks very nicely too. Plus, second coating only your sorted & sized bullets keeps the diameter growth factor under control if you have to do a recoat.
Now size the bullets in any manner that you normally use (they will need sizing because powder coating is ~0.002" over as cast -- just don't use any oil or lube on the bullets while sizing as it isn't needed. The coating is slick plastic and goes through sizing dies and gun barrels without damage or deposit of any kind.
If you cooked the coating minimally (and that is what the 325 oven temp and the shorter 10 minute bake time were all about) you now have a tough flexible coating that can run through your sizer and your firearm and not crack or break, or chip ever. It will also allow rifle bullets to expand like a soft lead bullet likes to do.
Bullets fired through a tree hold on to their coating ....... beat on a bullet with a hammer until you mash it totally flat if you don't believe me.
I no longer water quench for full hardness during casting as I don't need that hardness any longer and I like for lead bullets to expand freely when they hit meat .......Eyeball the bullets coming out of the sizer for band coverage -- this means no leading at any velocity your gun can shoot. See, a lot of those little imperfections on the driving bands just got healed during sizing, huh?
GAS CHECKS become optional for low velocity use, but folks still like them for full velocity rifle uses. Folks say accuracy is very good up to 2,200 fps and then degrades progressively after that the faster you go. Folks shoot .223 AR-15 55 grain cast and coated slugs at over 3,000 fps and when it hits a jell test block it acts just like a soft point varmint bullet does -- it blows up violently.
Powder coating is excellent for them Glock polygonal rifled barrels -- no lead exposed so it is also nice for your health when shooting at an inside range.
PS ....... you can coat small motorcycle parts, too