Homemade shot?

[Homesteader]

The thread below about running ball got me to thinking about shot. Is there any reasonable way to make shot at home, without building a drop tower? I've seen gang moulds for 00 shot or so, but I'm just wondering about possibilities for smaller shot, for say squirrel or rabbit or fowl.

Just curious. Could be an interesting exercise in possibilities.

(As a side note, did the colonials / frontiersmen ever make their own, or did they just buy it?)

 

[rebel727]

I've heard but haven't tried it that you can melt lead through a metal colander into a bucket of anti freeze or brake fluid and it makes shot with tails but it supposedly works as well as round shot.

 

[biliff]

There is (was?) a device called the Littleton shot maker. Basically a very, very short drop tower. From what I understand the product was rather inconsistent and not very round.

Believe in the old days they'ld pour some melted lead out on a flat surface and let it cool into a flat sheet, then cut it up into small cubes with a knife. The cubes would then be rolled between two flat rocks to round 'em out. Probably one of those exercises that would kickly turn into too much effort for very little return.

 

[paulvallandigham]

YOu can make your own screen for pouring shot, dumping the lead into water. Then, pour the cooled shot into a tumbler, and let them beat against each other to make them round. Then, all that is left is to screen them for pellet size, and store them separately for use.

The size of the holes you put in your screen( sieve) determines roughly the size of pellets you will achieve. The degree of tails, or roundness of the pellets as they hit the water is largely determined by the height of the screen over the water. It does not have to be very far. Often less than a foot is needed to produce fairly round pellets when making small shot sizes.

 

[blafen]

Ive seen two devices, one was a short drop tower device, ti said for round shot you had to make sure the lead melted through the holes and then passed through a flame before entering the coolant. the other method i have seen involved a trough with holes drilled in it, when the trough was filled with molten lead it would pour out of the holes and then roll down an inclined plane and into some coolant, supposedly both o these methods made good shot, i will try to find the thread involving homemade shotmakers.

 

[tg]

One can probably use one of the various methods of making non-round shot as did the guys in the old days and it would probably be as timeconsumimng and pattern as well as the old type which I have heard is from OK to bad, I have not tried myself, I suspect if one could load up an oz. or so of small shot with tails or without, with dimples or rolled and pounded,into a .62 or so bore size gun, it would take the type of game that the shot size was suitable for, most likely it would do best at rather close ranges

 

[arquebus]

I used one a number of years ago, very similar looking to the Littleton. It had an electrically heated trough on top that held the lead with a couple of nozzles, with little holes in, on one end. The lead would come out the holes in a fairly fine stream hit a short ramp & then roll off into a container of vegetable oil to cool. You would have to rub some chalk on the ramp so the lead could form the shot by not sticking to the ramp. I seem to think the pan/ramp were made of aluminum & the whole set-up was about the size of a toaster. The one I used came with three sets of nozzle for sizes 4/5, 6/7, & 8/9. From memory it would put out about 10lbs/hour if you kept the trough full, & produced pretty acceptable shot.

 

[tjohnson56]

I'm not sure if I'm right with this. But once I saw a picture of a old roundball mold and where the two handles came together for the first couple inches behind the block of the roundball mold there were 6 or 8 small holes that were 1/2 each in one side of of each handle. Is that a clear picture? If the handles were opened you would have half a hole on each handle in 6 or 8 spots on each handle that when closed matched up with the holes on the other handle to form 6 or 8 small pellets.

The only purpose of these holes in my mind was to make shot while you were pouring round balls. I kept looking at them and wondering how many pours it would take to get enough for a load of shot for one charge.

Maybe I'm wrong about what these holes were for, I just don't know for sure one way or the other.

 

[musketman]

There is (was?) a device called the Littleton shot maker.

It still exist, below is their link.

Littleton Shot Maker

 

[jtmattison]

There was an article in Backwoodsman Mag a while back about making shot.
The author just uses a large coffee can full of water and drips molten lead in with a ladle. The shot has tails but he claims it shoots great patterns.

HD

 

[mazo kid]

The lead would come out the holes in a fairly fine stream hit a short ramp & then roll off into a container of vegetable oil to cool. You would have to rub some chalk on the ramp so the lead could form the shot by not sticking to the ramp.

It seems that I remember some threads on the castboolit forum with good pictures and details of making the nozzles, etc. Shot seemed to be pretty consistant.

 

[mckutzy]

on a different forum i visited awhile ago, someone had made a shot maker similar to the one u had mentioned, the model this person had made,fueled by a gas torch, was an angled plate with a dam and some bolts threaded into the plate, that had holes to allow the lead to flow out into a bucket of water or something. the bolts turn to allow the lead to flow, an on/off switch.

 

[mazo kid]

This is what I use when I need a small amount of shot. It's a bit labor intensive but does work nicely. The single round ball is .600 just for size comparison.

 

[Grizzled Roberts]

In Joseph Plumb Martin's book he mentions getting away from camp ( at a lull in the action ) with some ruined cartridges. He said he made shot out of the balls with which he shot squirrels, again out of hearing distance from his camp.
If you have read Martin's account of his time with Washington's army, they carried nothing extra
with them. Most of the time they were lucky to have the bare minimum to just survive. There was no detail how he made the shot from the musket balls. After reading these posts I would bet he flattened the musket balls and cut the flat lead
into shot. Thanks guys :bow: :bow:

 

[bingo1952]

E.Porter Alexander related the same story about shooting small game in the book Fighting For The Confederacy which was his journals that was published 15 or so years back. He had his servant "mash up musket balls" for him which sounds like flattening and chopping to me.

 

[JackAubrey]

I've made shot by carefully dripping molten lead into a bucket of water.The closer to the water the better.The pellets come out somewhat teardrop shaped.They seem to stabilize in flight but I'm still testing.

 

[Joel/Calgary]

There is another old technique you can still use. Do a web-search for "rupert shot", and ignore the golf and photography hits. Prince Rupert published a small treatise on a method of shot making in 1665, but the technique was apparently around from the late 1500. It became the standard and was apparently still used used for quite a while after shot towers were developed (1780s?). The shot produced was reasonably round but had a small dimple (not a tail) IIRC.

It uses a shallow colander with holes appropriate for the shot size desired, through which molten lead is poured, dropping a short distance into water. The colander has a wide brim to sit on top of your catchment water container. You fill the colander with hot coals to keep it and the molten lead hot. The lead needs a little arsenic or antimony alloyed to increase the surface tension, so clip-on wheel weights will likely work well as-is or as an alloying source with plain lead. Melt the lead separately and ladle it through the colander. Good results are apparently somewhat sensitive to lead temperature, and it may vary somewhat with alloy, shot size, air temperature, distance of drop, etc. I suspect that it may be sensitive to how fast you pour, too.

You can even buy an apparently working reproduction, although the description/instructions are incomplete (but the photo is great): http://www.goosebay-workshops.com/THE-SHIP-S-STORE

You can also use the very old technique of chopping up sheet lead and tumbling it to make it round. Traditionally, this was done in a small keg, but a rock tumbler works well nowadays.

Joel

 

[preston cook]

sorry pic wouldnt post :redface:

 

[Joel/Calgary]

Dang - now ya got me to playing a little more seriously with this. Lets try this: http://www.goosebay-workshops.com/phy/clim/34624/rupertsshotmsaker.jpg

Lesse if that works

Well, that's the link. Try again for the pic:

AHA! Gotit. That's the Rupert shot-maker.

Joel