Ammunition & Hand Loading > Cartridge and Shotshell reloading
Copper Plating
unfy:
It'll be a week or two before I get back into this project. Gotta wait till payday to get some more supplies (copper flashing primarily).
In the mean time... I have some questions!
Bullet prep time is insidiously long. Wire brushing or steel wool'ing 100 rounds is just not fun by any stretch of the imagination, and it takes forever. I've tried holding them in a vice... and that's nothing but failure. A grinder + wire brush wheel seems ... dangerous. I did pick up some dremel attachments... but... that doesn't really seem like it'd be much better.
Any ideas on how to more easily rough a bullet up physically ?
Does anyone have any experience working with moderately strong acids ?
Hydrochloric 30-some% is easy to get a hold of at hardware stores (near the acetone / spirits)... and sulfuric acid isn't too hard to find either (typically in plumbing in a black bottle in a bag).
The idea is to do a chemical etch instead of the physical prep. Since I'm coming from a bullet mold, everything should be nice and clean to begin with. I'm not sure if the physical roughness (groves etc) helps the plating or not (akin to roughing up a surface before gluing it) ??
I assume I'd want to plastic containers with lids... and something to act as a strainer. The idea being to place bullets + acid in one container, agitate it a bit from time to time... and eventually drain all of the liquid into the second container (with something to hold the bullets back like the strainer or lid). Then get the bullets into some distilled water for a rinse then into the plating solution.
lastly... any *simple* ideas for getting my basket completely submerged, or a different idea ?
i've fiddled with the idea of a cork screw style thing so that the motor is above the solution spinning the cork screw (ala washing machine)... but that doesn't seem like it'd really be all that great in practice.
although... one has to wonder.... what would a popcorn popper like thing work ?
something like that ?
i'm not entirely sure if the physical tumbling or movement of the bullets is causing problems or not, too......
unfy:
next attempt will require the copper roof flashing stuff -- i don't doubt i have an anode surface area problem.
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popcorn popper idea prolly wouldn't work out too well.... assuming the fingers / rods are the electrical contact.... i can see uneven plating from bullet to bullet being all too possible.
a thought that prolly won't go anywhere -- take a bit of coiled steel / spring steel / wire stuff that typically makes up a plumbers snake.... and spin that within a pvc jacket (plumber snake is cheap, too heh). this way it's easy to redirection the motor drive down to a basket that's completely submerged in liquid ? i can see many hurdles to overcome with this idea... but... just throwing it out there. not only is there how to actually connect things, but also how to get the electrical wire to the basket. one advantage is it might be easy to remove the basket from the liquid and a smaller basket size ?
i primarily need a larger diameter basket at the moment so that the bullets actually get submerged (with rotational axis center being above the liquid currently)
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i dunno, something along the popcorn popper idea still seems like it'd be the easiest. well... something that flips the basket rotation 90 degrees that is (so that it's more like a traditional washing machine). just not sure how to get proper tumbling / electrical contact yet.
Ghost:
I've been following your bullet plating experiments with interest. My wife has one of these:
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=14803572&RN=939&
It looks like you could drive the inner basket from the top pretty easily. It's not the cheapest, but it might work a little better than a POPCORN POPPER! :D Just kidding. Good luck.....you're getting a little closer all the time.
Ghost
unfy:
Ghost:
Yup, salad spinners are interesting indeed. Over the weekend, when I was looking for just a generic round "basket" or tub to make a new basket.... I was seriously eyeballing the $6 walmart salad spinner. It was pretty close in most of the dimensions (don't think it had quite the diameter I was looking for though, maybe...).... but opted to just try what I had instead.
Coincidentally, the cheap walmart spinner was perfectly cylindrical shaped - it didn't taper toward the bottom. I also don't think it was quite as tall as the BB&B spinner (due to my current pvc construct, i've got a height limit of about 6 or 7 inches i think).
If ya take the salad spinners, and mount them on their side for use in my current basket setup.... I don't doubt that salad spinners (possibly without the outer shell, or with the outer shell mostly cut away) would make fine replacements for the atrocity i have now hehe.
Without changing their orientation (ie: just using it orientated like it is the pic in the link, and spinning it like it would under normal operation) ... i don't think there would be any tumbling effect for the bullets at all ? I think for salad spinners to tumble, they require variable / differing speeds to be applied so that the centripetal force and gravity causes things to jumble. Doesn't quite work out so well given the constant drive motor (let alone that it's a slow motor).
Popcorn popper -- heh, i know you were jesting, but the concept of how it tumbles the kernels was what I was pointing at, not the actual device :). Although - if i could put some bullets in a popcorn popper and get popcorn out... that'd be awesome. A switch to turn on the spinner for plating, and a separate switch for the heat ? ... ok, i really am a zombie / way too exhausted today.
I also wonder if a "bag" made out of plastic window screen.... which you then place on top of of something shaped like:
/\/\/\/\
or maybe just a cross shaped bar (an inch deep or so tall). Ya hang the bag on top of it so that there's a few inches or so of 'play' / 'sag' resting on top of the bumpy surface ... and then spin the cross bar or the bag. the idea being that the bullets will be forced to tumble due to the bumpy surface, and the bag keeps it contained.
if the bag is wrapped around rigid box with just a very saggy bottom... that'd prolly do fine.... with the rigid box frame of the bag being able to keep it from twisting in a knot like a sandwich baggy.
of course then the question is how to get electricity to the bullets. would a simple cross shaped wire near the bottom of the rigid frame work (assuming you have enough bullets to cover the wire even when sagging) ?
this device is horrible to try to explain in words, and prolly sucks to try to draw. i might try to make a construct of it later using legos and a plastic bag or something ... and take pics.
still also fiddling with an impeller / cork screw / something design. i just can't see it working :(
also, forgot who at the moment, mentioned the vibrating stuff. been trying to ponder how hard it'd be to mount an upside down vibrating brass tumbler/cleaner into the solution. the hornady tumbler comes with a strainer lid as well :P. it's an intriguing idea although i dunno how well they vibrate when inverted (nor how much vibration is needed) ... and... still debating on getting electricity to the bullets hehe.
unfy:
Picked up the copper flashing. 6 inches by 10 feet for $35. Oy.
Also grabbed a couple 5 gallon buckets while i was there to possibly look into using them for replacement basket. If their diameter is too big... well... always handy to have spare 5 gallon buckets anyway heh.
Lastly, grabbed some non-metallic window screen for $6.
I'll start eyeballing stuff and deciding what to do next.
cut off a 5 gallon bucket, then cut the very bottom off of the other. drilled holes, etc.
prolly gonna wrap wire around the inside of it for first attempt. need to strip 16 feet of wire :/
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