Letter 15058

Plating Pistol Bullets [Illinois] 

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I run a small company that makes hard cast hand gun bullets for hunting and I would like to learn how to apply a copper plating to them to get rid of the problem of leading the bore. I need a process that will apply the copper to hundred's of bullets at a time and will not beat them up or distort them in anyway. Also it must be put on in a way that the plating won't strip off in the riflings of the bore under the extreme pressures of the bullet passing at high velocity. I know it can be done as another company does it to their bullets.

Thanks,

John Anderson
- Andalusia, Illinois, USA

Match Grade 308's? I prefer 300 Mags on a windy day, and 25-06 on a hot calm day. I've shot those rounds and the Copper still comes off in the rifleing. In order for the rifleing to function it must gall the bullet surface, and in so doing some of the copper is transferred to the rifleing lanes. You can analyze the cleaning patches for copper and find it there. Anyway I recommend barral plating in a finer media such as BBs. If you are really concerned you can use a rotating kiln design. This would virtually eliminate any distortion of the surface, then screen separate them. Fluoborate process. I used to barral plate Cadmium with a Chromate conversion coating onto 20mm rounds for the navy without media and they still shot as true as 20mm can shoot.

Dave Kinghorn
Chemical Engineer - Walnut, CA

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

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