Brain storm

[blackbike]

I just put a tunafish can full of anti freezes under my Lee/drip-o-matic.
Can some of you sourthen engineers tell me the cheepest and easy way to inprove my new shot maker.
Thanks, blackbike

[turbo1889]

I'm not from the south but I'll offer my thoughts. Not a bad idea in principle, basically a free shot-maker that makes a little bit of shot at a time the entire time you are casting and after a while I imagine that would build up, in fact for me personally as little as I load actual lead bird shot it would probably more then cover my needs.

Probably the first order of business would be to make a deeper shot container then just the depth of a tuna can to get shot that was more round. I imagine one could take a bench and drill a hole in it about 2-3" diameter and then take a foot long piece of 2-3" PVC drain pipe with one end capped and rig that up to fit in the bench hold and hang underneath with its top flush with the top of the bench and then drill a hole in the aluminum bottom plate on the Lee Bottom Dripper pot on then set it on the bench over the shot container filled with anti-freeze. Should get some nice round shot that way and only have to empty out the shot produced every few weeks or so.

[turbo1889]

How big of shot are you getting and how consistent is the size of the drips?

[littlejack]

Just out of curiosity:
What does dropping the shot into anti-freeze do?
Jack

[turbo1889]

I have never made shot myself, but as I understand it, straight undiluted antifreeze is the most common cheap liquid that you will get nice round balls from. Water doesn't work that well. A shot maker works by being a controlled leak that makes a whole bunch of same sized drips that while molten fall into a cooling fluid and solidify before hitting the bottom of the container, preferably into as round of a shape as possible. Water apparently cools the lead too fast and has too high of surface tension that dents the drops when they hit the surface and makes dimpled out of round shot.

That's what I know about the process from reading posts on here.

[dbosman]

If you have pets, I suggest switching to fabric softener. It's not sweet (and tempting) Nasty tasting but non toxic and it washes off easily.
That was the most useful tip I got from reading forty two pages of the shot making forum on the shotgun site.

[littlejack]

Thank you fellas.
Good information.
Jack

[blackbike]

Thats my line.
I am going to play with this.
Its that controled leak thats got me.
I know they should be the same size and round, but they don`t have to, to work good.
Please kep em coming.
Thanks, bb