Cleaning Bullets or degreasing

[Paul]

Do you guys clean or degrease new bullets before you coat them and if you do, how do you do it.?

[Russ in Wy]

I have contacted some of the Bullet Mfg's & have been told various things. Some say good to go ,others say, to clean & be safe. Its easy & quick. I wash them all in 91% Rubbing alcohol fm Walmart. Just dump into used butter tub, cover with alky ,stir a bit , let them soak for five mins. Pour off liquid back into bottle, dump out bullets onto shop or paper towel on shallow tray & I have old hair dryer that I used to evaporate dry . Roll them around till they are warm , 2/3 mins. I have 3 med size [ approx 8 oz ] plastic vitamin bottles with about ¾" of small steel balls in them, from Moly plating kit that I got fm NECCO yrs ago. Large size BB. Depending on bullet size & weight ,I can do 100 per bottle. ie 20 cal 32 or 40 gr. I now coat with Danzac or Tungsten disulfide , also called WS2 I think. Add just very small amount of powder to each bottle ,after 1st run, which takes more to get everything coated. Just a knife tips worth. I use vib tumbler with small amount of media in bowl to cushion the bottles a bit. They rotate on axis & circular pattern. 2 hrs shud give a good plate . Use a snug fitting rubber band on neck of bottles, will act as a seal, seems as tho the powder will work its way out ,even on tighten lid. I seporate shot & bullets in a plastic colunder ,bottom holes drilled out to let shot fall thru. You can use as is or polish off excess on paper towel lined shoe sized box. I like to precoat the brl with Danzac also after cleaning. When I got my Danzac fm Sinclair Intl. there was a small bottle of Liqiuzac with the powder. 3/4 drops on a patch run thru brl & let dry, and ready to shoot. Sinclair doesn't sell Danzac now. Some people have mixed the powder with alcohol & use that to precoat also I have heard. I have shot 300+ rnds without cleaning & not lost any accuracy in the Pd towns. My 2¢, Russ.

[rayfromtx]

Most bullets I shoot are not sealed. The hollow point has a considerable volume that can collect liquid. Isn't that going to be a problem?

[WrzWaldo]

I'd have to say Russ is spot on with his explanation.

[Hotshot]

Paul,

I've moly coated tens of thousands since 1993. Might try WS2 if I ever use up the moly I bought way back then.

I always clean the bullets before coating. I usually do 500 or 1000 at a time. Place in a plastic bowl, put in one shot of liquid dish soap, fill with very hot water, stir with a table knife or screw driver blade for a couple minutes. I rinse 'em right in the same bowl with very hot water untill all the soap is gone, drain off the water and pour the bullets on some paper towels. Most of the water will evaporate quickly if it was very hot, and the towels will get the rest. I used to put 'em on a cookie sheet in the oven at 200 deg. for a few minutes untill I learned the real hot trick on the water. Just put the dry bullets in the tumbler and start your coating. I have one bowl for my tumbler that is dedicated to moly coating so I don't clean it, just add more moly when I need it. 1/2 to 1 hour coats 'em well, I usually roll the bullets around on paper towels to get the excess off so they aren't so messy during the loading process.

[Lee C.]

Welcome to the forum Russ, I just started doing a test to see how much i could shoot befor i would have to clean my gun. But if you have 300 rounds and stell have good accuracy yet I'm not going to worry about it. Thanks,

[Silverfox]

Before I start, I'll apologize for being so long winded, but I have never been able to keep most of my Internet postings very short.

I'm going to piggy-back on this thread and insert a few photos of my operation to put Danzac on some of my 27.8 gr. BTHP Hammett bullets this afternoon. I have a .17 Remington that I had built in January of 2006. It was built on a Rem 700 ADL action and has a 24" stainless steel super match grade Pac-Nor barrel on it. I had Greg Tannel bush the bolt for me too. The barrel has three grooves and a 1 in 9" twist. My gunsmith fluted the barrel and chambered it with a reamer from Dave Kiff at Pacific Tool. The reamer had a .1945" neck, .064" freebore 1º30. All my brass has to be neck turned to about .1915". I was planning on using the 25 gr. Hornady V-Max bullets in this one and the dummy round I sent in had the bullet seated out a wee bit too far. Live and learn the hard way! The barrel has a 3" cylinder on it, so I'll be able to have it set back. If and when I do that, I will have the reamer redone so it has no more than .010" to .020" freebore. I only have about 1,100 rounds down the tube, so it is far from shot out!!!

The action sits in an H-S Precision Varminter stock with the aluminum pillar bedding block. The stock was black in color with the gray webbing--not real easy to hide in the North Dakota snow banks!! I did a custom camo paint job on that stock this summer. I installed an HVR Jewell trigger and that is set at 1 pound of pull and I installed a Tumbleweeds Custom Rifles aluminum trigger shoe on it. I have a Harris swivel bipod in the 9-13" size with the Pod-Loc accessory on it and do most of my shooting from the prone position. The scope is a Sightron II 6.5-20x50mm with side focus. Here's a photo of the rifle:



On to the topic!!! The first thing I did was weigh 461 of these bullets and separated them into two weight groups. One group weighs from 27.51 gr. up to and including 27.60 gr. The second group weighs from 27.1 gr. on up to and including 27.81 gr. I did this same weighing process with the first 400 bullets I purchased from Hammett and while I haven't been able to tell much difference in point of impact while shooting prairie dogs or paper, I "feel better" by separating them by weight and loading them that way too.

To clean the bullets, I used 91% rubbing alcohol in a small glass beaker and swished the container around in a manner that made the bullets move around in the bottom of the beaker. I did that action for about one minute. I poured the alcohol out into another container and then dumped the bullets onto a couple of paper towels. I got the majority of the alcohol off the bullets with the towels and then used an old white T-shirt to finish the job. Then I used an old hair dryer and blew hot air on the bullets as I rolled them on the T-shirt.

For getting the Danzac onto the bullets, I pulled some BBs out of some 12 gauge shotgun shells I had on hand that were loaded with BB size shot. There were between 61 and 64 BBs in these shells. I used four different containers to hold my bullets, some of the BBs and the Danzac. Two of those containers were pill bottles with the kid-proof covers and the other two containers were plastic 35mm Fuji film cannisters. I placed 70 bullets and 50 BBs in the largest pill bottle, 35 BBs and 50 bullets in the smaller pill bottle and 20 BBs and 50 bullets in each of the 35mm Fuji film cannisters. I have a Midway vibrating case cleaner into which I placed the four containers with the normal amount of case cleaning medium in the tub. I let that run for two hours. Then I loaded up another set of 167 bullets in the vibrating cleaner and gave them a coating of Danzac. As I type this, I have another 74 bullets in my vibrating case cleaner getting a coating of Danzac.

When I took the containers out and dumped the BBs and bullets on paper towels, it looked like I had a very good, even coating of Dazac on every bullet. The BBs were picked out of the mess of bullets by hand. (That sure made my fingers slippery, but it also made them VERY BLACK!!) I used several paper towels to get the excess Danzac off the bullets and have the bullets stored in plastic bullet containers for future use.
I still have about 21 cartridges loaded with bare 27.8 gr. bullets that I'll shoot before I begin to test the coated bullets and try to find a suitable load.

Here's some photos of the containers I used and the finished product. Thanks to all who have contributed information about their methods and experiences with Danzac.



My pile of 150 Hammett bullets in the 27.61 gr. to 27.81 gr. weight class is below:



And below here you'll see a closeup of the 70 bullets I coated that are in the 27.51 gr. to 27.60 gr. weight class:

[WrzWaldo]

Silverfox,

That's a fine looking bunch of bullets!

[Silverfox]

WrzWaldo--Those are welcome words since they are coming from the "Danzac Bullet Coating Expert!" Thank you very much!!!

I sure hope they shoot half as good as they look!

[Russ in Wy]

The reason I say that is that, my 300 + count was in Big Bore ,So to Speak, 222 & 223 [.224]. I now have 2 -20 Tac's & haven't gone that high in count yet with them. In the .204 cal I am just over 100 rnds . Haven't had the chance this season to go beyond that point. Probably won't either as weather here in WY is becoming a factor now. Am guessing now ,that the increased speeds of the .204 rnds may make a difference over all in where the Max rnd count may come into play. Just a thought ,time will tell I guess. Russ.

[Lee C.]

Russ, I'l keep my test going to see how much i can shoot the coated bullets befor i have to clean the 204. But we are suppose to be getting snow this week. And i can't take the cold like i once could. So it will be a little while befor i get that fare.

Silverfox, Great report on coating your bullets. I'm looking forwards to see what kind of chanes you see useing the coated bullets in the .17 Rem. with your pac-nor barrel. I've only done one powder test with the coated 40gr. berger bullets so fare. And it was like shooting a different gun all together. It's just a 12fv savage factory barrel but with the ws2 now she shoots alot better than it ever did. Good luck with your testing the coated bullets.