Ammunition & Hand Loading > Cartridge and Shotshell reloading

Copper Plating

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unfy:


3 coats. i believe this is the 20min one from last night given first recoat weighing. its... smooth textured as well.

so...

20min
30min
30min

final weight: 142.6 grains (from 139.7? 139.6?)

final diameter: .404 - .405

that... gives a coat thickness of 1.5-2.0mm ....


for s&g i tried a single bullet with the 13v setup again.  got the burned result again.  whatever.  that'll be more important when plating more (higher surface area requiring more power draw).


grabbed the other coated bullet from last night... steel wooled ... juiced.... acetoned ... and about ready to go all night on a C cell near the bubbly agitation stuff.

unfy:
Oops, didn't have the cathode hooked up correctly.  Soooo it bathed in copper sulfate for no reason all night :D

Re-acetoned and got it hooked up correctly, we'll see what a day of plating does.

unfy:


The 3 times plated bullet under microscope with it's built in light turned on.

No pot marks, looks fairly smooth, etc.

Again the shiny spots are just shiny copper etc.

unfy:
! SUCCESS !





This is between 12 and 13 hours in the dip on a C-cell battery.  Admittedly after an initial 20 or 30min coat the night before.

it weighs over 165gr (over 23gr of copper added, and yes i took the wire off before measuring it) and has a 0.428-0.430 diameter!

there *is* a tiny bit of roughness / crystalization looking stuff on the nose / tip of the bullet (as well as a tiny bit at the base), but.... it's not nearly as bad as the older overnight bullet.

and at 30 thousandths of an inch too big... well... thats way too much copper :).  means the plating thickness is 15thousandths, which is twice what berry's does.



i am *not* going to strip the lube off of 100 or more of my MBC lead.  and i don't have a pot just yet (work has offered a solder pot they're not using, so i could just start ladelling if i bought some molds).

so the move into figuring out how much power to supply lotsa bullets will have to wait. 

stage 1 of the experiment is complete!

Dan W:
Do you have a way to section that bullet and measure the layer of copper? It might be interesting to see if the thickness varies at all

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