tin can shot maker?

[superior]

I've heard that one can make a shot maker by drilling a little hole in the bottom of a tin can and letting molten lead drip from it into a bucket of water.
I'd sure like to try something like that to keep up with my snake-shot loading. Anybody hear of that before?
I have no need for any volume production, but like anything else, if I can make it myself, I'd rather do so.

[Oreo]

Some experienced folks will be along shortly but till then...

I was playing with some cerrosafe the other day. I wound up dripping some into a cup of water. The drips were all perfectly tear-drop shaped and maybe .20" diameter.

Based on that experience I figure you could make shot that way but you'd need a lot more height then the few inches I was using. I don't know how high but enough to give surface tension time to pull the drop back to round and then for the lead to start to solidify in that shape so the impact with the water doesn't cause deformation.

[spuddicus]

Just water will deform the shot, if you're just loading snakeshot for .38's or similar I don't know if that'll make too much of a difference for you.

Certain antifreezes, I think hydraulic oils and other liquids like that will have a low enough surface tension to allow for more round shot.

[I'll Make Mine]

Actually, if you let the lead drop onto a slanted plate and then roll into water (so the impact with the water doesn't deform the shot just as it chills), you'll be starting on the road to replicating a commercial shot maker. If you can come up with a way to keep the lead level in the can consistent, you might even be able to make shot of a consistent size (at least until the solder seams in the can melt and spill lead all over the place).

[Oreo]

Well that's easy to do. You have a small can doing the dripping and a larger can dripping into the small can at a slightly faster rate. Make provisions for over-flow to be directed away. This way the small can is kept filled to the over-flow level until the large can runs out. The Romans made a water-drip based clock using this method.

I also think modern cans use rolled or welded seams, not soldered seams so they should hold molten lead just fine.

I think you're going to use a pin-hole though. I suspect even a 1/32" drill bit will make a hole that drips too fast.

[I'll Make Mine]

I'd certainly suggest cooking a candidate can in your lead pot for a half hour, then testing the seams, before committing. Yes, some modern cans use a welded side seam or are drawn seamless, and all use folded lids (some with, some without solder), but the folded seam isn't very strong in itself (airtight, and made to hold vacuum, not pressure inside) and expansion might open it up.

Then again, the same setup could be used in a cheap stainless mini-loaf pan or small saucepan, where there are no seams to worry about.

[Sasquatch-1]

Could you use a large galvanized pipe cap instead. Put a section of pipe in it, mount at an angle, use an old grill burner to heat the pipe and it might work. If the grill burner doesn't work, I did see a thread where a person was talking about a bendable heating element.

[Jim]

As I understand it, the shot towers of days gone by were high to give the molten droplets time to form a spherical shape and solidify before they hit the water in the pit at the bottom of the tower.

[Sasquatch-1]

As I understand it, the shot towers of days gone by were high to give the molten droplets time to form a spherical shape and solidify before they hit the water in the pit at the bottom of the tower.

The old Baltimore Shot Tower was over 234 feet tall. Here is a short article.

http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/baltimore/b29.htm

[NZSarge]

My, old tin can attempt

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=154548

[superior]

My, old tin can attempt

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=154548

Ya gotta love it!
I see my next project. Thanks for the pics.

[mtgrs737]

A very small hole say .020" dia. would be a good start. You need a ledge about 1.25" long set at about 30 degrees for a rolling ramp. mount the can about .200" above the top of the ramp and then heat the can and the ramp to 550 degrees. Sand the ramp smooth and chalk it so the lead won't stick to it. place a catch container that is a minimum of 16" deep just under the bottom edge of the ramp, no more than 1/4" from the bottom of the ramp. Fill the catch container up with antifreeze or liquid laundry soap to the very top, make sure it does not touch the ramp or it will cool it off too much. Allow the coolant to run over the top of the catch container and into another flat container to catch the coolant. Stop the process when the coolant temp reaches 140 degrees or the catch container gets half full. Smelt only clip on type wheel weights because they have little tin (tin is the enemy of shotmaking), about 2% antimony and a trace of arsenic which will help in getting the shot to round up. Keep the lead as consistant in temp as possible and skim the dross off the top of the melt. You might find it easier to add melted lead to the can as adding ingots will affect the melt and plug the drip hole. Keep the level in the can as low as posible too high a level will cause the drip to turn into a stream (too much pressure). If you could buy a commercial dripper bolt or make one from a 3/8 bolt that would be better as you could mount it higher on the side of the can and be able to keep the level of lead just over the inlet. Good luck!

[shotman]

Good luck in your project. First water dont work and .020 is way to big . That is why the shot makers sell for $350

[superior]

A very small hole say .020" dia. would be a good start. You need a ledge about 1.25" long set at about 30 degrees for a rolling ramp. mount the can about .200" above the top of the ramp and then heat the can and the ramp to 550 degrees. Sand the ramp smooth and chalk it so the lead won't stick to it. place a catch container that is a minimum of 16" deep just under the bottom edge of the ramp, no more than 1/4" from the bottom of the ramp. Fill the catch container up with antifreeze or liquid laundry soap to the very top, make sure it does not touch the ramp or it will cool it off too much. Allow the coolant to run over the top of the catch container and into another flat container to catch the coolant. Stop the process when the coolant temp reaches 140 degrees or the catch container gets half full. Smelt only clip on type wheel weights because they have little tin (tin is the enemy of shotmaking), about 2% antimony and a trace of arsenic which will help in getting the shot to round up. Keep the lead as consistant in temp as possible and skim the dross off the top of the melt. You might find it easier to add melted lead to the can as adding ingots will affect the melt and plug the drip hole. Keep the level in the can as low as posible too high a level will cause the drip to turn into a stream (too much pressure). If you could buy a commercial dripper bolt or make one from a 3/8 bolt that would be better as you could mount it higher on the side of the can and be able to keep the level of lead just over the inlet. Good luck!

Lots of good info here for the mad scientist in me. Thanks all

[KCSO]

Short dropped or swan shot was pretty commonly used in muzzleloaders. I have pulled loads from old smoothbores with the teardropped shot in them. It makes a good short range load for modern guns too. If I remember right i think 90 feet was a minimum height I read one time.

[Nix]

One of the suppliers I deal with here in Ontario for my gun business runs the only commercial shot tower I've ever seen. It's about 3 stories high, maybe more (hard to gauge just from looking at it as there's not much around it for comparison). I've talked to the owner about it many times, he said it was built about 75 years ago by his Grandfather (third generation business owner I believe). The problem with building your own, he says, is that because lead is soooooo heavy, the higher you go, the more exponentially expensive it is to build because of course you need materials that can withstand the weight of having a ****-load of molten lead up there. Likewise you need a furnace and some form of elevator (manual or electric) to get the metal up there in the first place.

They've experimented for years on building smaller models but it's very difficult to get that happy medium; you need the height to give the shot high enough air-time that the force of the air rushing around it makes it spherical and cools the outer layer of lead enough to survive the plunge into your coolant. He told me they use brake fluid, actually, as their coolant of choice.

He seemed to think that small bird shot like #9-#6 could be made easily enough with smaller drops-heights, but anything over that you start getting the 'goose-shot' people here have mentioned already; shot that is ovular or pointed at one end and not commercially acceptable.

I'm sure most folks here have seen the Littleton Shot-Maker or similar devices, they are limited I believe to #6 bird. I still cast my own buckshot with SharpShooter moulds and would love to see a 'drop' style buck solution.

[I'll Make Mine]

Hmmm. Go look for video of indoor skydiving, then ramp up the airflow to double or triple the speed. That looks like a way one could get the effect of a 200 foot shot tower in a twenty or thirty foot height. Alternately, or in combination, one could bore the "tower" into the ground and avoid much of the support cost and the elevator -- the furnace would be at dock level, and an auger or bucket lift would bring shot from the pool back up to ground level during production.

For buckshot, it seems to me one could use automated machinery to cut extruded wire, roll it in a channel, and get shot that matches swaged ball for significantly less machinery cost. It would only work for dead soft, though, not for hardened buckshot.

[kullas]

Im getting good shot out of my homemade shot maker. the drop tower is almost a inch. i get 5's, 6's, 7's, 8's and some 9's im making another set of drippers should get me 4,5,6 and 7's what im wanting is 4's

[RP]

Making shot is a very picky project. I have made a lot of shot and even with a steward shot maker it was not as easy as adding lead and catching shot. The type of lead will effect shot the type of coolant also. Even after everything was worked out with the heat lead coolant and perfect shot was being made just shutting it down and starting it back up took some tinkering to get it running perfect again. Also moving the setup almost put you back to square one. All that being said you really just need a small hole a ramp to get it rolling and a coolant, The best coolant I found to use was transmission fluid I got used since i needed about 10 gals for my setup. I ran it for a few hours at a time heating up the coolant and had to be able to cool it. All the soaps anti freeze or water was a waste of time. Good luck you can do it

[Nix]

The 'indoor-skydiving' is an interesting idea, but it seems like it would require a lot of equipment to make it work.

The dug-out method sounds interesting as well. The more I think about it, what about an old well? Provided it's been lined with something (to prevent chemical coolants from seeping into the water-table) that would actually be a really neat idea.