Making lead shot

[schutzen]

Anyone here make there own lead shot? I'm trying to set a Littleton Shotmaker up and I'm looking for advice on coolant tank design. Any help will be appreciated, Thanks.

[Edward429451]

I took 2 soup cans and riveted handles on them, took an old pie pan and tapped it for a hose fitting, and ran a length of rubber hose down to a 5 gal bucket. The soup cans are filled with chilled recycled refrigerant oil (good old frige in garage to keep oil chilled), sit the can of oil in the pie pan and underneath the shelf of the dripper so as the shot drops in the oil it overflows and drips over into the pan which drains into the 5 gal bucket for later reuse.

2 soup cans are not enough. The oil heats up rapidly and wont solidify the shot enough to keep it from deforming when it hits the bottom of the can. Cookie sheet in freezer with more cans of oil ready to go when working can hot. Only 2 cans make for small batches of good shot. When I make me up 8 or 10 more cans, I'll be set for bigger production runs.

Knowing a plumber who will drop off old (pure) lead drain lines and having a good supply of good used free refrigerant oil from my work helps.

[Boz330]

A friend of mine used to make his own shot and sell a bunch as well. He used to use military ammo cans to hold the coolant, which was just standard machine tool coolant. He had a set up which had 2 Littleton machines and 4 or 5 smaller 2 nipple machines and they all ran at the same time.
One of those machines is now mine and I haven't done a lot with it but as Edward said it is necessary to have cool coolant ready to switch out. I have taken several turkeys with my homemade shot, so it does work.
One note my friend never had any luck running pure lead in his machines, just wheel weights. I think that a little tin added to the lead would have solved that problem.

Bob

[duke76]

I also use the large military ammo cans, holds around 3 gallons of oil, I made 50 pounds last night, I just switch out the ammo can with another one when the oil gets to hot, if I store the oil in buckets outside the shop door and the oil is 30 degrees I can usually make around 25 -30 pounds of shot before the oil gets to hot to handle, around an hour, that is enough weight counting the oil and shot to handle comfortably with 150 degree oil anyway. The ammo can overflows into a galvanized pan that you would use to change your oil in.