Thread: Casting for an SMLE

I have been playing around with a few different powdercoats. I only had Eastwood's Gloss Black until recently and have been getting pretty average results. I have also been struggling to keep the tall and skinny bullets standing up while moving the into the oven.

As such, I bought some Eastwood's Super Gloss Clear and Ford Light Blue to try as I have it on good authority that both these powders work well. I also purchased a silicon mini icecube tray off eBay which it just so happens has squares that are a little larger than 0.30.






I was experimenting with dissolving the black powder in acetone and then dunking the projectile, letting the solvent flash off, and then dunking again. I got some decent coverage like this, however I also got some solvent pop on some that obviously had trapped solvent when baking. It is also a smelly and time consuming method.
The clear and blue were so much easier to get an even coating on. I think I will use the clear going forward as I like the look of as cast projectiles and you also can't see any of the paint defects.


I had loaded up a few rounds and tested them on the weekend.
The load was 210gr projectiles at 0.3190, 27.0gr ADR2205, and the original Greek primers. Simulator estimates 2000fps for this load.

I shot 4 rounds sitting at 100yds (grass was way too long for prone) and got a group of around 2.5". I have no idea of the velocity, but I had my sights set to 300yds at a guess and was shooting only a few inches high. This was not a very scientific test, but the projectiles and rifle show promise, so I will load a bunch more of this recipe and do some proper testing when I get a chance, I might bump the charge up a little, but should start to get close to 50kpsi at around 29-30gr, so don't want to push it too far.