reclaimed shot

[5shotbfr]

i have a chance to buy a couple hundred pounds of reclaimed shot for not a whole lot of money .
i plan on smelting into ingots and casting into boolits for my 475 linebaugh

can someone tell me about how hard i can expect this to be both air cooled and water quenched

[Kskybroom]

I"d load it in a shotgun..
Or trade it to a shotguner..
Is a guess on hardness,
Its a unkown mix of mag an chilled shot..

[runfiverun]

i'd guess it about 4% antimony [average] with arsenic.
add 1% tin and you should be about 12-13 bhn waterdropped about 20-24.
i have seen shot from about 3 to 6% antimony it just depends on what shells it come from.

[alfloyd]

And you will have a hard time getting it to melt and clean up.
There is a grafite (sp) coating on it that makes it hard to melt.
There will also me a lot of junk to skim off the melted lead.
BUT after all the work is done, you will have some nice lead ingots. :)

Lafaun

[6.5 mike]

It may depend on if it comes from a trap or skeet range. Trap shooters mostly use magum shot, used to be one. I have smelted reclaimed stuff with good results, & the bhn #'s posted are pretty much what mine showed. If you WQ, size it as soon as you can, did'nt take mine long to get real hard (2 weeks).

[John Boy]

Magnum lead shot -13 .5 Bhn (aged) ... the same as some batches of wheel weights

[5shotbfr]

thanks guys

i have no idea if it came off a trap or skeet range or where ... but from the range of shot sizes i'd guess its a mix of everything .
the guesses at hardness are close enough to make me happy
and at .25 a lb it is definatly cheap enough

[evan price]

A quarter a pound isn't bad. Just be aware it can be a pain in the butt to smelt. If it is dirty or oxidized it won't want to melt. Takes a lot of heat and a lot of time... There's a lot of fluxing required to clean it. If it looks white it is oxidized and that takes a lot of work.
Will probably be a mix of regular and mag shot, my guess would be 2-3% antimony, ZERO tin. Hope there's no bismuth shot in the mix.

[leadman]

Do not fill the melting pot with shot. Put a little in the bottom of the pot, have something like a large cooking spoon to smash the shot up against the side to break it open. Add shot as needed.
If you flux with a wax more of the lead will seperate from the trash.
You should end up with a very good alloy. Sometimes a little tin helps but not necessary with most molds.

[5shotbfr]

i put about 50 lbs into ingots today .
i sort of did as leadman said .. except i cheated a bit . i put about 5 lbs of wheel weight metal in the pot and once it was up to about 700 degrees i started trickling in shot .
didnt have any problems with it melting . once my pot was full ( about 50 lbs ) i tossed in a tea candle for flux gave it a good stir and skimmed off about 7 tablespoons of trash.
i fluxed it a second time didnt get hardly any trash and poured ingots , easy as pie and not a single problem .

[Ole]

I have about 500lbs of ingots smelted from reclaimed shot and it casts very similar to clip on wheel weights from my experiences.

[caseyboy]

I use a lot of reclaimed shot. I find it to be a "tad" harder than COWW. I add 2% tin to it. It also WQs beautifully.

[runfiverun]

a bit of bismuth in the alloy will harden it just like antimony will.
if you get 3-4% then it causes the alloy to become brittle and it will fracture easily.
thank goodness tin will mix with it and make it not so brittle.

[Texantothecore]

Thank you for the questions and the answers. I am looking at switching over to reclaimed shot from my current WWs and this was a question that I had. Good answers too. Thanks everyone.