I have been powder coating for the past year. Through trial and error, I have found for the Harbor Freight Red to work, you need to slightly pre heat the bullets before tumbling. Here is what you do:yooper_sjd wrote: ↑Sun Jun 04, 2017 3:32 pmbeen doing it a few months now, I tried the shake and bake method with harbor freight PC, didn't get good coverage, and it wore my bad shoulder out. took an old vibrator lower (get your mind out of the gutter, it was a tumbler lower) that the bowl just totally wore out on. but on a folders (plastic coffee can) made a bottom metallic screen bowl for in the bottom, soldered on negative lead from a small transform, so now i get a good even coat with 5 minutes of tumbling.
Yoop
- Set oven temp to 400 degrees.
- Preheat oven for approximately 5 minutes.
- Get your bullets ready on the mesh screen you use to screen off excess powder coat.
- have your plastic coffee tub ready and cleaned
- put them in the preheated oven for EXACTLY 2 minutes at 400 degrees.**
- Wearing high temperature gloves, remove the bullets and put them into the coffee tub.
- Add around 1 to 2 TBSP's of powder coat to the bullets and quickly get to tumbling. Tumble for about 1 minute and don't stop.
- You should have all bullets evenly coated well, and screen off the excess
- Bake for 20 minutes at 400, and water quench them once ready.
** If you preheat the bullets longer than 2 minutes at 400, and then you add powder coat you will have one big sticky glob of bullets and mess. If you don't pre heat enough, then it wont stick. I guarantee you 2 minutes is the magic number here with Harbor Freight Red... trust me don't play with it because I already have... You will woe the day you don't follow the 2 minute rule, because either way the mess you create will give you a headache.
Another product you could use is Ford Blue powder coat sold and distributed by Eastwood Company.
There is no need to pre-heat AT ALL, and since the quality of the powder coat is so good very little goes a long way.
Just tumble and bake with this... Costs about two to three times as much as Harbor Freight Red, but only saves you about 5 minutes. Take your pick.