Guns & Reloading

Painting Your Own M855 Green Tip Ammo Quickly And Easily

Buy at least two Cabelas .223 100 round plastic ammo cases (or equivalent).

Cut the tops of off both, you need to have at least two bottoms. Take the first bottom and load up your rounds to paint.

On the second, drill 100 holes. I used a hand drill and was not even trying to be accurate. I was done in just a couple minutes. This is your painting jig. You only need to do this step the first time.

Place the paint jig on top of the loaded rounds and flip it over. Let the rounds drop down into the holes by gently shaking the bottom as you pull it off. Hold this in your hand, don't set it down. The cartridges at this point are bullet tip down, and the tips should be protruding out the bottom of your little paint jig. If you set it down, they will push up and out of the holes, and your tips won't get painted.

Place a board, cardboard, whatever you are painting on, on top of the ammo (the primer end). Hold tight and flip back over. You should have 100 little bullet tips poking up. Paint away with spraypaint or whatever you use. I use an airbrush with flat Testors green paint. Two of the little Testors glass bottles thinned down for my airbrush will do 1500 to 2000 rounds. Update - I recently did a batch of 500 and thought, I'll just use some green spray paint instead of my airbrush because it takes some time to setup the airbrush. What I didn't realize is this: When you paint the rounds with an airbrush, they are almost dry as soon as you spray them. In just a very short time they are dry enough to dump in a bin and do the next batch. However, with spray paint the drying time is much, much longer on the order of minutes. 10 minutes+ with this last batch and some cheap $1 green paint. It may take longer to setup and clean an airbrush, but the process is way faster in actual action. If you are doing a large batch, I highly recommend the airbrush route, that or make a bunch of paint jigs so you can do at least 500 at a time.

Using this method it is absolutely a piece of cake to zip through 1000 rounds. You could take your time making the jig and spraying and do a better (prettier) job, but in my case, it's not for pretty, it was for identifying 2000 62gr steel core loads. It was fast and easy and works.

Questions

What's the sealant?

Here's what I do. I use cheap nail polish thinned with acetone, not the fancy primer sealer products that are expensive. In the brass prep phase, I seat the primer on all my processed brass, then use a small artist brush and seal the primer (before loading with powder). I then load the cases with powder, add a bullet and when that is done, again, brush + thinned nail polish and I seal up the bullet. I drop these in nice 1 gallon plastic zip bags with silica for moisture control. 500 total per 30 cal ammo can. Great for long term storage.

Do you do this to all your reloads? and Does the nail polish mess with the gun?

I do not do this to all my reloads. Typically if I plan to shoot it in the near future, of if I am loading SMKs, I do not do this. If I'm adding to my long term store of the SHTF stash, then yes, I do.

As for the nail polish in the gun, I've read it's harmless numerous places, and I've shot a bunch of my reloads with it, at first to test, then just for fun... and have seen zero reasons to think it makes the gun dirtier or hurts it in any way. I am perfectly comfortable with using this.

Another batch ready for the ammo can: