I am thinking of taking up powder coating my cast bullets.

One possible benefit would be using pure lead. No mixing alloys; no contamination from zinc, nickel, cadmium, etc. Hardness shouldn’t figure into the equation at all.

Anyone with experience using pure lead?

Any thoughts?

__________________
and what his trumpet saith

Do you shoot pure lead bullets without the powder coating? One of the reasons to powder coat is to cut down on leading.

powder coating isn't a cure all. You still need proper fit for your gun and hardness for your load.
PC pure lead might work fine for the light loads.

You really need to break down what you're asking into groups. I've cast and swaged my own bullets for decades. While I'm no expert by any means, I do feel I have a solid knowledge base to draw from.

99% of my casting has been with nothing more than range scrap. Range scrap can and will vary in alloy/hardness so it's best to make large batches when recovering lead from range scrap/melting down bullets. So I do #100 batches at a time & they come out 8bhn/9bhn alloy.

Air cooled cast bullets = 8bhn/9bhn
Water dropped cast bullets = 12bhn/13bhn

The people over on castboolits came up with a simple pencil test to test alloys. It actually does pretty good!!! I've tested it against known alloys and the pencil test is +/- 1 bhn at most.

Pure lead doesn't cast very well in molds that have flow lines. A roundball mold does well with pure lead because there are no flow lines in it. Pure lead tends to cast bullets with rounded edges like rounded bullet base edges or crimp grooves and grease grooves. The other problem with casting bullets with pure lead is the bullets will come out smaller in diameter.

While coating bullets will add to the diameter of a bullet. It can only add so much then "accuracy falls off".

You will be seeing the "Accuracy falls off" a lot. After all, what's the since of taking the time and trouble to cast & coat bullets that will only have minute of pie plate accuracy @ 50ft?

Casting bullets with pure lead/rounded edges will do just that. Add more than 3/1000th's of coating and accuracy goes down hill real fast.

At the end of the day you want to start with a quality bullet and that takes enough alloy to get clean sharp edges to your bullets.

Proper fit and hardness are a thing of the past. Used to be but not with coatings. Old:
You hit the loud button, BANG, the bullets off to the races!!! Hot gases go by the bullet base (bottom drive band) and go into the lube groove pressurizing it. The alloy had to match the pressure/load because the bullet base expands sealing the bbl and it also is pushed forward compressing the lube groove hydraulically pushing the lube outward & forward. This sent the lube forward to seal the front drive band/bands.

Get everything wright and you had an accurate load that didn't lead. Well the coating is everywhere it need to be already. This take the correct bullet size/alloy for the load out of play.

This taurus pt111 9mm has a typically large bbl, .357". I have 2 other match grade 9mm's that have .355" bbl's. I cast these 125gr bullets with the 8bhn/9bhn alloy and sized them to .356". I used these undersized bullets in the pt111.

Accuracy did start to fall off but there was no leading. Because I use a soft alloy I started sizing all my 9mm bullets to .358". The .358" bullets didn't affect accuracy in the tighter match grade bbl's.


Note to self: Smaller will work but bigger ='s accuracy

I've showed the picture of these bullets before.


Not only was I testing different pressures, I was testing alloys in a 308w. I was looking for an alloy that had elasticity Isn't brittle/shatter). Don't let the speeds fool you, some of those loads were high pressure with fast burning pistol powders like unique. That 2300fps load was a 50,000+psi rifle powder load. That 2300fps bullet started out life as a lee 230gr blackout cast bullet that I ran thru a bump die reforming it to have a shorter nose and a gc.


With pc'd bullets it's better to use a soft alloy

When the alloy's hardness matters with cast coated bullets:

The hardness of the alloy is most important with the reloading process. I see thread after thread after thread parroting that the commercial cast bullets are hard because they don't want them getting dinged up in shipping. Same goes for the plated & coated bullets. While beauty is only skin deep some view any flaw in a bullet as bad.

The real reason they sell hard bullets is because of the lack of knowledge of the people buying them. They use standard reloading dies to reload them and wonder why bad things happen. Soft bullets get swaged down in the reloading process when the wrong dies are used. Commercial bullet makers know this & the best way to stop this is by making rock hard bullets.

Case neck tension and the expander die/ball is where the games won or lost. Most reloading dies are designed to reload jacketed bullets. Cowboy action or lyman "M-die's" are designed for cast/plated/coated bullets. A picture of a lyman m=die with the "step" at the top of the expander ball along with the llloooooonnnngggggg body that expands the case where it counts most, namely where the base of the bullet fits/sits.


Factory vs m-die. If you look at the factory expander you can see a line on it. That where the cases were belled enough and left a "water mark" where the top of the case ended. As you can see the factory expander only went into the 45acp case around 1/4" where the m-die is 1/2".


custom 9mm expander vs factory.


I made that custom 9mm expander to load .358" bullets in the 9mm's and not have wasp waist/death grip on the bullet/bullet bulge/swage the soft 8n\bhn/9bhn bullets down.


If you plan on using soft alloys for your coated bullets you need to use an expander that will not only provide neck tension on the bullet. The expander has to expand the case deep enough to protect the soft bullet's base and not swage the bullet's body down.

Used to be I'd use 3 basic alloys

Strait range scrap 8bhn/9bhn for +/- 16,000psi load.
Water dropped range scrap 12/bhn/13/bhn for +/- 28,000psi loads
A version of lyman #2 alloy 15bhn for anything over 30,000psi.

Now I use the 8bhn/9bhn alloy coated for everything from mild to wild with pressures up to 38,000psi.

I still use #2 alloy in high pressure/high velocity rifle bullets because the long bodied cast rifle bullets are subjected to different stresses/torques that the shorter bodied/drive banded pistol bullets. I'm not saying you can't use the soft alloy on rifle bullets. 10-shot 50yd plinking loads with a 8bhn/9bhn alloy that was pc'd/coated and no gc (gas check added)




I called rcbs and they sent me (free/I tried to buy it) a expander for a 303british. I told them I was reloading .310"/.311" cast/coated bullets in a 308w and needed a larger expander ball for the larger bullets. They sent me the 303 expander, said it was designed to be used with .310" bullets.

You might consider going 3 parts pure to 1 part ww and water dropping your cast bullets. Then coat them and do some testing. I've found coated bullets to be extremely accurate and easier to find accurate loads with than their traditional cast/sized/lubed counterparts. Once you find an accurate load or the most accurate load in your tests, try tweaking the oal/powder to find the "best/most accurate load." Then re-test your alloy 3 to 1, 2 1/2 to 1, 4 to 1, etc. Use the same "most accurate load" and re-test with the different alloys. Once you've found the best alloy stay with it.

Same alloy:
Used in the 9mm load pictured in earler post/308w plinking loads
38spl 6-shot groups @ 50ft

45acp 10-shot group @ 50ft

44mag 1 1/2" 6-shot groups or less @ 25yds

Thank you all for your replies.

__________________
and what his trumpet saith

Alloy is still important, as Forrest notes, when dealing with higher pressures. Pure lead is only good to about 1000fps in service calibers. Beyond that, you need a tougher allow to withstand hogher pressures, coated or not. Range scrap works for me up to about 1200-1300fps in magnums or the 357sig. Beyond that, water dropping or adding lino gets me beyond that.

__________________
NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

In my book,with the kind of good info you've laid out here to us casters,you are Sir an expert.