Shot maker

[RugerFan]

I am interested in making my own lead shot and was wondering if anyone has successfully done this with home grown equipment? John Wooters shows a pic of a home made shot maker in a book he wrote, but no intstructions on how to build it. His shot maker looked similar to the Littleton shot maker (a bit pricey at $375.00 http://littletonshotmaker.com/.

I got a hold of some ooold plans for a "Francis Bros. Shot Pot" (I can e-mail these to anyone that's interested). The plans look a bit "Micky Mouse" to me, but maybe the darn contraption works. I haven't tried to build it yet.

[PatMarlin]

Here is your promissed land...

http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=29444&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Read every post- and every link, and look at all the pictures... :coffee:

[RugerFan]

Thanks PM,
That's some good info.

Also I was a kind of amazed at how little a couple of those guys knew about the "dangerous vapors" from melted lead. Some odd wives tales being quoted there.

[castalott]

Howdy!

I have considered a shotmaker that is a pan with holes that has an adjustable air vibrator mounted to it.Mount the pot above it and open the nozzle. The vibrating effect 'might' cut the streams of lead into cylinders and they will form into balls because of surface tension. They would need to fall far enough to form spheres and then fall in water to harden. ( Crop oil does something on top of the water.)Your adjustments for your shot size would be your hole size, your lead depth, and the vibrating intensity/pattern.

I dunno if it would work....comments?

Dale

[PatMarlin]

One of these days I gonna get into some serious shot cast contraption fabrication... It's on the list.. :lol:

[hazmat]

RugerFan-

I have recently entered into this realm of shotmaking. I found the discussion on shotgunworld several weeks ago after making numerous attempts with home-made shotmakers. I would like the plans you mentioned in you previous post for the "Francis Bros. Shot Pot (please email to kto_on@yahoo.com)."

My latest contraption is a small square-shaped cast iron pan with a very small hole drilled in the side. I have a small 1 inch piece of flat soft steel welded at an angle along the bottom edge of the 'maker' to facilitate the shot dripping/rolling into the coolant. The closest I have been able to get is making tear-shaped pellets w/ approx 1% semi round shot. This is after trying several coolants (including antifreeze, machine oil, and diesel fuel).

From what I gather it is a 'tinkerers' dream. I personally can only try few a couple of hours at a time before getting frustrated and thinking seriously about sinking $375 in the Littleton's contraption. However, my frugal nature just won't let that happen! If anyone here has actually found success in lead shotmaking your suggestions are definitely wanted!

Best regards! - Hazmat (a lurker no more!)

[PatMarlin]

Hey Rugerfan,

I'd like a copy of that too. PM coming your way.. :razz:

[KYCaster]

Hazmat: The teardrop shapes have nothing to do with the kind of coolant you're useing. It's the ramp they roll off of that causes that. Any dirt, grease, rust or...whatever on the ramp will cause it. You also need to coat the ramp with chalk or soapstone so the drops won't try to stick.
One big problem with coolants is getting the shot clean. Diesel fuel can be rinsed off with gasoline, but that leaves its own residue. Antifreeze; you can't get rid of it without violating about a dozen enviromental regulations. Water soluable cutting oil has worked OK for me. It rinses off with water and that can be flushed or poured on the yard without harming the little furry critters.
No matter how you do it, its still a PITA. The five dripper Littleton machines will run about 25 lbs./hr. plus the rinse, alloy prep. and other processing, time soon adds up.
Another factor to consider is shot size. The drippers will do a pretty good job of making 7 1/2 or 8 shot but larger or smaller is very difficult to do consistantly.
Even if you go through a lot of shot, making your own is hard to justify. If you have two or three friends willing to help then you could probably crank out enough shot in one weekend to last all of you a couple months.
HTH.

Jerry

[hazmat]

Thanks for your suggestions, Jerry. I will try to make sure the ramp is clean. I think I need smaller-sized holes for my drippers as well as my lead is coming in more of a stream than in drops. The cost-savings is sorta important as I currently have more spare time than spare money! The closest reloading supplier that I can get to is over 2 hours round trip away. With gas around here over $3/gal, my 15 mpg pickup really adds to the cost of shot!

Take care,

Haz

[Linstrum]

Hi, RugerFan, how ya doin’? Did you know that when something is thrown that it is weightless? A bullet in flight or a baseball when thrown is in free fall as far as gravity is concerned even when the trajectory is rising. If you don’t have a shot tower to drop the lead from, then throw it up in the air. Once the lead is free from contact with anything except gravity that will greatly affect its motion it will form into a sphere. Shoot molten lead straight up and it will rain birdshot. Now, the hard part is to figure out how to do that! Molten lead won’t spray out of a garden hose very well.

I made my own shot one time when I was in high school. There was an old water well close by that was about 150 feet deep that went dry. I made a windlass out of some 2x4s and an old cable spool mounted on a length of water pipe and lowered a bucket of water down the well on a small diameter cable (rope might have burned from the hot lead). I just dribbled molten lead down the well and then hauled the bucket up. I never thought to make sure that I didn't fill the bucket so full of lead that the cable would break pulling it up and I was just darned lucky that I didn't have that much lead! I was using old car batteries as my lead source and the shot was okay, but I didn't know back then that arsenic was needed to make the lead hard and to help it form into spheres.

My next method was to use a piece of 2" water pipe about six feet long with a cap screwed on one end. I filled it almost full with diesel fuel and heated the top foot of the pipe with a big propane torch until it was smoking hot, which is about 450° F, and dribbled lead into the hot oil. It made oblong and tear drop shapes with a few pretty good spherical ones. I never did find out under what exact conditions it formed the perfect spheres because it was a real mess to operate and would only handle a few ounces of lead at a time.

Unfortunately, the only really good way to make shot is by dropping it about 100 feet. I know you probably don't have an old dry water well around and unfortunately the only way to pull off dropping lead from high up is if you can find a tall cliff to pour it over, know somebody who is the super in a ten story building with an elevator shaft, works on a well drilling rig so you can pour the lead from the top of the derrick, have a tall bridge around on an old untraveled road you can pour from, etc. You'd also need a kid's inflatable wading pool at the bottom to catch the lead. Do you have any friends over around Tusayan or Kaibab, Arizona?

[PatMarlin]

There are guys making good round shot with the "shotmaker" homemade set ups, you just have to experiment.

If you do searches through the above link website, you will find the right combination of stuff, cause those guys have posted it.

Just takes ALOT of posts to read through.

[matlflas]

I have been making shot for 7 years at home and i just found this site and there is a lot of good info on here so i thought i would give some good info back the way i polish my shot is i got a electric concrete mixer and i can polish 250lbs at a time in it and put about a cup full of joh deere graphite in it an let it tumble for about 3 to 4 hrs the key is to have all the oil off and it has to be dry if you would like to know how i dry it email me at matrifle33806@aol.com thanks

[matlflas]

He is right any dirt or burrs on your ramp you will make teardrops i usually use steel wool and then i put soap stone on it and it works great i can usually make 5 to 600 lbs of shot before i have to soap stone it again hop this helps keep the good info coming see yall .

[matlflas]

I read some stuff on here about that i was wondering how it worked and where u could get some.

[Linstrum]

Water soluble oil is used a lot in two places, one is in automotive cooling systems as rust inhibitor and the other is in machine shops as the cool spray lubricant and rust inhibitor for making up aqueus cutting fluids for grinders, lathes, and milling machines.

The cheapest I have found it is for machine shop use because it is used by the gallon in that application, for automotive use it is the exact same stuff but it is used by the pint and quite often costs like you wouldn't believe. For the best price on oil I'd look at both automotive supply and a machine tool supply websites under the headings of water pump lubricant, engine rust inhibitor, water soluble oil, cool spray, and cutting fluid additives. This is what I use in my machine shop, see:

[URL]https://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRHM

Go to metalworking fluids in the list.

Remember that water soluble oils are flammable like any other oil until they get mixed with water, so be careful not to get an oil fire started.

Good luck!


rl652

[leadman]

I have a Littleton and even with this there was a long learning curve. Coolant does make a difference in the shape of the shot.
I have settled on laundry detergent, specifically All Free & Clear. A little expensive, but has not flash point and is very easy to wash off. Do not add water to this as this causes the shot to "pop".
I have the coolant level about 1/4" below the lip on the Littleton for the best looking shot.

[matlflas]

I dont know what kind of shotmaker you have but besides that you need to try used cooking oil like from a quickstop that makes chicken strips and such most of them will let you have it because they just throw it away and it works great you just have to clean it and i have made all the things i need to clean it and its not so bad now like i said before i have done this for a long time and if you have any questions just email me but i am always looking for new info i learned on this you can never know to much so looking forward to hearing from you

[carpetman]

matlflas---I too had thought that used cooking oil was a waste product that they were happy to get rid of. Then I read an article that recyclers actually pay a pretty good price for it. Enough so that in larger cities it is a high theft item. People have trucks rigged like the septic tank pumpers and they go around at night and steal this used oil. Don't even know what all it gets recycled into.

[Storydude]

matlflas---I too had thought that used cooking oil was a waste product that they were happy to get rid of. Then I read an article that recyclers actually pay a pretty good price for it. Enough so that in larger cities it is a high theft item. People have trucks rigged like the septic tank pumpers and they go around at night and steal this used oil. Don't even know what all it gets recycled into.

Biodiesel and Cosmetics.