Ammunition & Hand Loading > Cartridge and Shotshell reloading

Copper Plating

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unfy:


As a side note, when throwing failed copper plated bullets into melting pot, ended up with some neat slag ... and yes, everything was completely melted :)

unfy:
Another failed attempt 15 bullets.

I will attempt once more in the next week then call it quits

unfy:
I will prolly make another tub attempt sometime this coming week.  The 16-18 hour work shifts are really putting a dampener on hobby time :(.

My next thought is kinda evil / interesting.... and I will undoubtedly attempt at least one bullet this way just because its an itch that MUST BE SCRATCHED.

What if you take a 2" or 3" PVC pipe.  Cut it to about 3 inches in length.  Cap one end.  Line the inside of the pipe with your copper donor plate, fill with copper sulfate, and attempt to plate that way ?

This seems like a much more controlled environment.

At 3 inch pipe, a 1/2 inch bullet gives you  1.25" of solution between the lead and the donor plate, which is very close to the suggested distance.  It's also a guarunteed thing assuming you hang your bullet in the middle.  At 3 inches in length, you got 1.25" or so of copper donor plate above and below the bullet assuming you get hung in the middle of the pipe.  This is also near the suggested stuffs.

Heating the solution ? yeah, can't do that in the individual 'cells' as it were :(.

Looking at my past plating results, agitation is definitely very important.... not quite sure how to do that in these individualized things just yet.  Set a vibrator tumbler on the table next to it ? hehehehehehehe

For more extravagant attempts... you could possibly run tubes to the bottom or along the top to pump solution through, or air, etc.  But.... yeah, no.  I wanna see 1-10 bullets at a time work first ;).

unfy:
Old thread, I know.  Been busy.

I've got the 3 inch pvc pipe, i've got end caps (a dozen or so... will pick up more today) ....

Gonna grab some extra 49 cent wood to make a jig / miter box for cutting the pvc (aint got a band saw, darn apartment living!).

Also going to hit radio shack to pick up a small vibratory dc motor to see how it handles vibrating the pvc + water in side.  Not an ideal solution, but it's a start and easier than other ideas i been debating.  If the lil $2-$4 motor is powerful enough to vibrate 4 "cells" at once, that'd be cool.

Although, running air hoses to each thing wouldn't be terribly difficult, i'm just not a huge fan of trying to figure all that out for getting right amount of air agitation etc.  The desire to avoid more aquarium air pumps or a normal & loud air compressor has something to do with it heh.  We'll see how vibratory does.

Got distilled water, more root killer (the copper sulfate pentahydrate), and some re-sealable gallon jugs for better solution storage. Still have the sulfuric acid, but really don't wanna touch that.

Similarly, still have hydrochloric acid as a possible etchant for lead surface preparation, but really wanna avoid that as well.

Heating the solution I'm just gonna skip for now.

unfy:
Hit Radio Shack to look at their little vibrating motors that were mentioned online.  The descriptions on line (numbers about size) indicated it was pretty small.. but... actually seeing it is ... wow lol.

Motor + vibratory weight combined was the size of a 223 bullet.

Waaaaayyyy too tiny to be useful to me heh.

I'll keep looking ;)

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