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Letter 15058
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Dave Kinghorn |
John,
Many years ago I worked at an ammunition company. They manufactured ammo of most common cals. They used a tumbler barrel plating process in very hot potassium cyanide plating solution. I remember the two main hassles they had,were with the antimony content of the lead, causing passivity during chemical cleaning. So be sure of that and work back. and the absolutely critical level of free cyanide in the copper strike bath. That's how they did it.
Mark Gunn
- NSW, Australia
Hi I am not a engineer but I have been experimenting with a small drum plating setup for my personal use on 45 acp and 45 70 with mixed results not having access to cyanide I have focused on an acid type plating bath ( copper sulfate sulfuric acid my plater handles around 400 rounds at a time and while not the best bullets I have seen it does turn out usable plated bullets the drum plater itself works great but I am not happy with the rest of the process but I am still learning . bonding to the lead is not what it should be and the plating is somewhat brittle. may try annealing after plating also I am casting from wheel weights, and other elements in the lead may be affecting the copper lead bond . also need to work on the pre plating preparation. my first batch I washed in sodium hydroxide solution and got very poor bonding; plain hot water worked much better, may try phosphoric acid wash next. I will email you pics of the plater if you wish it would be easy to scale up to a larger size if needed. don't be afraid to experiment!
mark dula
- stony point, North Carolina opt

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