dismal wrote:Ah, I thought it was just to make them look cool.
Nope, 100% purely functional.
If it was up to me they wouldn't be red, but red is what all the 'tuber's said worked the best with the "shake'n'bake" application method. Of course MY experience with the shake'n'bake method was (6) 480gr boolits I felt comfortable shooting, and 56 that went back in the melt pot. 3 of those 6 have spiked the snot out of my chamber pressures, and 2 have yet to be fired. They were really lumpy and didn't size for beans despite needing to be hammered through my .459 luber/sizer die.
The 330gr's shown above all measured out at .4595" after powder coating, so I'm skipping the sizing on the initial batch and will see how they shoot.
Federal has started offering polymer coated bullets for target ammo in recent years. It's a cheap alternative to copper jackets, and has the benefit of scrubbing the bore clean. The 300BLK guys have been deep into powder coating for the whole time I've been on that forum (a little over 4 years). So far, there's really no down side. One guy who's done a bunch of testing even claims the powder coat doesn't need to be consistent or even complete coverage and won't impact accuracy. I'm not sure I believe the accuracy bit, but I think he's probably right on not needing a full jacket to prevent leading. He bakes them in a 'loaf' and then breaks the boolits apart once it cools down. I'll likely try that with some smaller stuff in the future, but for now I'm trying to make these as accurate/consistent as possible for use in muzzle device testing. I'm going to go broke in a hurry if I keep shooting $.40/ea Nosler's; where I can cast a couple hundred boolits in a sitting and powder coat them while I watch tv or do other things.