My own shot tower

Just got the word , I am going to be working on a project in a 10 story building for the next few weeks by my self
So I went over to the building this AM to see what I needed

I found there is a old elevator shaft , with 2' of water in the bottom of the pit in the sub basement

Sometime in the past the elevator was removed
So I have a 12+ Story shaft
Electricty
Lead , As I an tearing out a bumch of old leade drain pans in the showers and all the old lead roof flashings

I will just have to add a little Lino to harden the pure lead

I plan on loading my shot dropper pot and letting it run

I am hoping the drop will result in close to round shot :mrgreen::mrgreen:

John

Woa! that ought to be interesting!

What an opportunity! Keep us informed!

I suppose a long-term lease on that elevator shaft is out of the question???? (LOL)

Kent

This sounds like a job for a Lee Drip - o - matic!

That is awesome man. Gotta love a REAL CASTER. When he goes to work, he spies a golden opportunity to make some shot. Most people would see a big empty elevator shaft as a hazard.......Not one of us. It's a chance to save a bunch of money on shot and a dripper. I really like the idea of turning an old building into boolits and using the building itself to do it. Good thinking! Thats pure genius!

Some folks have ALL THE LUCK!!!

Keep us posted!!!

Three 44s

better take a helper to carry all that lead up 12 flites of stairs. I will carry the shot out for half.LOL

I guess you should suspend a tarp below the water surface to catch the shot. Then put a bucket or screen to catch what rolls off. Perhaps a few drops of Dish soap to lower the surface tension? I would doubt it is needed, since the shot should be solid, by the time it gets there.
Greg

I tried the long drop approach once, and couldn't get the shot round without using arsenic alloy. But since you're using a shot dropper to do the dripping it just might work. Keep us posted...

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Originally Posted by shotman

better take a helper to carry all that lead up 12 flites of stairs. I will carry the shot out for half.LOL

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LOL
This is how I am getting the lead off the roof and top few floors
Besides there is still a working elevator
I found out the shaft is from a heavy lift elevator that was used 50 years back

First 30 lb pot is done , quit there so I could look to see
I pulled some of the shot out before I left today
70-80% is pretty round , not perfict but good enough for me to use for skeet
The remainder has pock marks , like little holes in the side of the shot ( size 8)

Not exactly sure of the cause
I will try lowering the temp a little for the next batch

I brought home a pile of roof flashings that I will smelt down and use


I found a pump on site to empty the shaft
So retreiving the shot should be easy enough

John

"Magnum" lead shot in #8 is about 6% antimony. The old shot towers used "poisened lead" or lead with arsenic. A little WW mixed in would not hurt. As to 80% success, sounds good to me. You can always remelt the mistakes.
Northmn

Hey, johnch, what an opportunity!

Where I lived when I was in high school there was a water well about 150 feet deep that was abandoned because the water table had dropped and the bottom was just mud. The casing was around 16" in diameter so I found a small bucket that would fit down the well and I rigged a windlass on some saw horses to lower and raise my bucket on a stainless steel aircraft lock wire line. I ran one batch of shot using melted lead battery plates poured through a coarse seive to disperse it into droplets. Back fifty years ago battery lead was not the calcium-doped alloy they use nowadays, and the antimony-arsenic hardened battery alloy I had made a bit of fairly decent shot. What impressed me about about pouring molten lead down the well shaft was how noisy it was, the mass of lead droplets rushing through the air made quite a roar! My product was like you got, a bit of the shot was not quite spherical and some of it was porous and spongey-looking, but it was good enough to make the effort worthwhile. I lost control of the windlass when raising the bucket back up and when it hit the bottom of the well it probably sloshed some of my product out, but I think I got most of what I poured down the well back up. Back then I had a blunderbuss and the shot worked great in it.

rl518

I just can't see it being a good thing to use a waterwell for pouring shot.
There must be another way.

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Originally Posted by 3rptr

I just can't see it being a good thing to use a waterwell for pouring shot.
There must be another way.

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Well, .....If the local water table has dropped to the point where there isn't standing water in the bottom, ....all you have is a tall hole in the ground; .....Not an environmental disaster!!

Kent

One of the characteristics of lead, antimony, and arsenic in their elemental forms, is that when they are exposed to nature they quickly become inert as far as releasing pollutants into the environment because of insoluble coatings that rapidly form on their surfaces. This is why the complaints about lead bullets, shot, and fishing weights from shooters and fishermen polluting the great out-of-doors is a bogus issue. The exception to this is lead in contact with very soft, pure snow melt water that has absorbed carbon dioxide from the air because of aeration, like from running through rapids and waterfalls, forming carbonic acid that attacks and dissolves lead and many other materials. Lead poisoning was a common occurrence from this in mountain cities that had lead pipes in conjunction with snow melt as the municipal water supply, like Denver and Salt Lake City at the turn of the last century. In those places the water was deliberately "hardened" by running it through beds of gypsum and limestone since hard water will not dissolve lead, a very simple, cheap, and highly effective method to prevent lead poisoning from lead plumbing systems. Both antimony and arsenic react with sulfur-containing compounds found naturally in the environment to form rather inert and therefore insoluble sulfides that are incapable of entering and traveling in the environment. The name for this "sequestration". I would think twice nowadays about using an old water well as a shot tower, but as was pointed out above, any lead, antimony, or arsenic that escaped into the particular dried-up well from my shot-making project will never enter into the water table.


rl518

I've spent a lot of time in the old Remington factory here in the state, and the shot tower is only about 5 stories high if memory serves. Certainly not 12 stories. I wonder if the problem is that the elevator shaft is too high? Wouldn't you need less height for smaller shot, too? Buckshot is what you'd need the higher tower for, because it takes longer to cool, from what I understand about casting shot.

I realize the OP is probably done with that job, but it'd be interesting to try pouring shot from halfway down the shaft.