I don’t think it was generally available and so was rarely used.
you'll never get a completely round shot dropping from that height.
They used cut shot which was a PC of flattened lead cut into small pieces with a knife. Round was not important. To the comments about shooting waterfowl with a round ball. Not so much. Shot was used alot. Think about all the pigeons that were shot by shooting into the flocks on their roost
Does not need to be round. I shoot the diy shot a lot.
I read some about that a long time ago and tried it myself. Poured lead sheet, then cut it into strips. Then cut the strips into about square small pieces with a sharpened blade hit with a wood mallet. The shot was about the size of #4 shot or maybe BB. I was really surprised that the pattern was really good at 32 yards, with the same volume of 2ff Goex and lead shot. Would definitely kill turkeys. I think it would be really hard to cut smaller shot though. I did experiment with cutting solid core solder with a pair of flush cutters and got usable shot but it was too expensive to consider using that method.
Inventories of Baynton, Wharton and Morgan and others list shot and swan shot in their stores. I do not know where it was made.
Yes, but it was not the uniform spheres that we use today.
No 1782, one guy got the patent for the process. Took a while for that to "gear up" so that the supply of the finished product was "plentiful".
