Ammunition & Hand Loading > Cartridge and Shotshell reloading
Copper Plating
unfy:
I've used I think both the Brownell's cloth and I think the bullet hole provided cloths (I forget name brand there) ... they do work marvelously. Makes'er shine pretty with only 2-3min of work instead of hour(s) with a brush.
I think I've used it on my sig p229... and don't particularly recall any problems.
Do some research / reading of your own, and can always test it on a blue'd firearm piece you're not too concerned about ?
unfy:
SFG: reading the label on the lead cloth, it does mention being careful with bluing. Heads up. Also, while around town, I did see a pro-shot (shoot?) brand that I've mentioned. It's the same cloth. Another warning, I saw a Hoppe's branded cloth that smelled different, so it's prolly made out of something else. Lastly, I also have some ... gunk in a small jar ... that smells the same as the cloth, so I'll assume it can be used with a cotton cloth in replacement of the impregnated factory cloth ?
These guys seem to have inexpensive swaging dies:
http://www.hawkbullets.com/swage-it.htm
I've sent an email inquiring how their jacketing dies work as well as questions regarding instructional docs / pics / videos. At $80 for dies to produce possibly 100x better quality bullets, it might make this copper plating venture moot :).
I'd still like to see this project reach fruition in producing a workable projectile though. Just to say it can be done.
Tonight I'll be picking up a bunch of distilled water and prepping for another go at copper plating again. First up will be cleaning everything I've got and testing a single bullet hanging from a wire again, just to prove the set up is still working.
I'm going to stick with just water / copper sulfateish solution this time around, skipping the vinegar and stuff. I figure it was contaminating the solution. Will be keeping the aerator and aquarium heater though.
I'll be heading to thrift stores and looking for some Pyrex for the acid etching step in the future. Other requirement will be a deep fryer basket / scooper thing made out of something that doesn't care about HCl to make it safer to work with. All this just to remove the time consuming wire brushing :(.
When taking apart the original basket as part of cleaning up work space, I noted there was plenty of copper coating on the wire that ran throughout the basket. This raises fears that copper on copper affinity might be making the lead plating harder than it needs to be.
I've still got my notched tubing for the mass-hanging experiment, and I'm still toying around with ideas in my head to make hanging bullets less labor intensive. The hanging idea has the possibility of keeping the lead as the primary electrically active plating surface, it just needs an easy way of getting bullets in the hangers.... all without creating a large surface area to suck up copper ions while submerged.
Using clothes pins... with metal attached to the outter parts seems like a very viable possibility. I... actually like this idea a lot and will fiddle with it when I get home, and post pics with what I come up with. This should make bullet -> hanger attachment real easy and quick although how to get close pin attached to electrical rail above the surface might be interesting. We shall see ;)
edit:
Talked a little with the folks at Hawk Bullets. Gonna get into a more detailed conversation next week (to avoid impulse buying a die set from them hehe). Looks promising and they're friendly :)
unfy:
Before cleaning up the copper plating tub... ewwwwww:
unfy:
Some manual physical roughing up, half hour in the tub at ~1v with power supply, make shift clothespin thing that won't work out, single bullet plated fine.
Basket exposes a lot of copper wire to the plating solution, I'd love to get something hanger-related working without being a PITA to work with.
Wonder if some kind of plastic clothespin with a wire run down for the contact point would work out. If they made some kind of 'needle nose clothespin', that'd prolly be more ideal.
edit:
basically, if i can take a plastic clamp that does or can be modded to where it grips the lube groove... and run a wire down to that spot to provide the continuity...
plastic duck bill hair clips maybe ?
unfy:
Took a refresher on HCl acid and was again humbled. That stuff just ain't friendly heh. Looks like a plastic basket is the way to go for possibly using it to etch stuff. Taking chances on non-lab equipment tools having reactive metals in it is just too great.
But.... further reading suggests nitric acid to etch lead. I recall seeing it in hardware stores, so that's a plus.
I dunno, the whole acid approach just seems... well... dangerously stupid lol. I think mostly because I don't have a way to safely store it.
I need a garage, gosh darn it hehehe.
Wonder if I can make steel wool gloves. Just rub the bullets in between hands for a lil bit, would make things at easier and quicker. Maybe something like gloves, layer of steel wool, layer of cheese cloth. I dunno, the whole physical abrasion step is irritating. Looking at the bullets before / after / etc, the abrasion is a possibly required step as well -- it seems like the copper better adheres to the lead when it's not an ultra flat surface.
Wonder if a small groove cut into wood or something would do well at keeping a bullet in place for a quick pass over with an abrasive pad / brush. Hmmm. That has possibilities. Similarly, if there was a PVC pipe or something that was lined with some kind of brush on the inside and ya just use a dowel to push the lead through ...
Can't go about tumbling them in some kind of acetone mixture with an abrasive. Dunno how you'd safely discard of the liquid mix after the fact (having lead stuff in it).
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