I like to find less expensive ways to accomplish tasks whenever possible.

About a month ago I posted a question here about moly coating. I don't have or use a case tumbler.

Someone recommended going to Toys R Us and getting their rock tumbler and using that. That's what I did. It's called the Scholastic Rock Tumbler, item #6360, and it cost about $40. Its tumbling case is small, but it's large enough to hold a box of 100 bullets -- maybe two boxes, depending on the size of the bullets. I also got Midway's Technical Grade Moly, item #677866. From Sports Authority I got a pint-size box of regular copper-coated steel BB's.

Since the bullets need to be cleaned before moly coating, I dump the ones I'm going to coat into a household glass baking dish, then put the hottest water available and a squirt of dishwashing detergent into the bowl. I then rub them for a few minutes, under the water + detergent mix, with a household sponge. (I wear household-type rubber gloves during all these cleaning and the following processing steps.) I then dump the bullets + soapy water into a colander, such as you'd use to drain spaghetti or wash vegetables, and rinse the bullets off with hot water until all the soap is washed away. I then dump the bullets onto a double layer of paper towels (I like Bounty towels) and put other towels over them and then rub them around for a minute or so until dry.

I put the cleaned, dried bullets into the hopper of the tumbler, and then fill it nearly to the top with BB's. Then I put a small amount of moly powder in -- it takes only a small amount; I made the mistake the first time of putting too much of it into the hopper. Then put the tumbler hopper onto the machine and plug it in. I let it run for about 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour, and then open it and dump the whole contents into a household glass baking dish. Then I take a spoon and fish the bullets out of the bowl, leaving the BBs behind, and put the bullets into the bullet box they came in.

If you want to do many hundreds of bullets at once, this method would be too slow. But for my purposes it works quite well and gives excellent results.

What is the reasoning behind using the BB's? What purpose do they serve? Don't the bullets vibrating and\or tumbling against each other impart the moly over the bullet's surface?

Moly won't just stick to the bullets, you have to pound it in. That's the why of it.

When Midway puts tumblers on sale you can buy one for between 40 and $50. I just let the bullets pound the stuff into ea. other--it works fine. But my directions with the moly say no more than 2-3 hours of tumbling. Man--the tumbler seems to work hard with a couple boxes of bullets--I wouldn't want the extra wt of bb's in there too.

Interestingly I did have a problem with some Berger flat base bullets whereby they got peened to the point that the base was a touch wider than the forward bearing surface of the bullets. I always wondered if the moly coating process could microscopically dimple the bullet jacket and thereby reducing accuracy? I use the "pill bottle" vibratory tumbler method, no bb's. Seems to work fine.

R