LEAD SHOT MAKER SYSTEMS - ANYONE USED ONE?

[windini]

Here is mine in action, about 80% is 7to7½.
Ran about 30 lbs, built it Saturday morning. You just need a tiny hole #69 drill for these. Some old scrap, a few mig tips and a tap and die set

Love that slo-mo video! Illustrates how the ramp eliminates the "tail" w/o the need for a long fall for the the sphere to form. I'd been having trouble grokking that little detail...

 

[smo]

Thanks CF

 

[deerstalkert]

I suppose the colander can be used to make 000000 buckshot.

wm

aka .32 cal?

 

[deerstalkert]

i am wondering if the typical lee bottom pour furnace could be adapted to being your dripper? those suckers are always dripping if you don't want them to!
if you increase the distance the droplets fall before hitting the coolant, would it increase the spherical consistency?
not that i need another hobby but have thought of doing this for years!

 

[sheriff john]

Might work if you could get a small orifice, long enough ramp to roll down, a lot of time to feed the pot and settle for one BB at a time. Interesting thought.

There used to be a small outfit available sorta like that idea back in the day. Don't remember much about it.

 

[Darkgael]

Coldfinger: Marvelous video. Thanks. Try cleaning the drip shelf with some steel wool before your next session and the coating it with some chalk.…blackboard chalk will do.
What is the coolant?

 

[Darkgael]

About using a Lee bottom pour pot. Maybe. I do not know the size of the spout on the Lee. If it is big enough (if), you could find a screw that you could insert into the spout (from the outside of course). Before inserting the screw, you would drill lengthwise through the screw with a #69 drill.
I dont know how you would arrange a drip shelf or a coolant reservoir.

 

[Coldfingers]

Darkgael
Coolant is fabric softener.
As I said somewhere before, I literally spent only about 2 hrs building this from scrap,. Version 2.0 will have some refinements.

 

[Big Iron]

A good friend ran a shot maker for years. It worked well but it is a lot of work as I look at it. It could be worth it if you use a lot of shot or plan to sell some.

BI

 

[SOLANCO]

It won't work unless you can drop the lead from a height high enough for the steams of lead to start breaking up into little balls. I believe the shot tower at Remington is about 100 feet tall.

The Sparks Shot Tower in Philadelphia dates to 1808 and is 142 feet tall.

 

[Coot]

The Sparks Shot Tower in Philadelphia dates to 1808 and is 142 feet tall.

The shot tower in Baltimore at 234 feet, was the tallest building in the United States when completed in 1828.

 

[sheriff john]

The shot tower in Baltimore at 234 feet, was the tallest building in the United States when completed in 1828.

Did they melt the lead at the top of the shot tower or at the bottom? Heat source? Just curious. Sure looks like a labor-intensive process. Just building the tower in those days boggles my brain.

 

[SOLANCO]

Did they melt the lead at the top of the shot tower or at the bottom? Heat source? Just curious. Sure looks like a labor-intensive process. Just building the tower in those days boggles my brain.

I don't know where they heated. But I sure would not want the task of hauling molten lead to the top. Not even with chain.

 

[Coot]

Did they melt the lead at the top of the shot tower or at the bottom? Heat source? Just curious. Sure looks like a labor-intensive process. Just building the tower in those days boggles my brain.

Typically, a shot tower has a furnace at the top to melt the lead and in the better ones, a trolly/dumbwaiter type hoist system to haul lead & fuel to the top. The Baltimore tower was built without scaffolding, working from the inside out. The Jackson Ferry shot tower in Wythe Co., VA was built of stone on the edge of a cliff to save building about 1/2 the height required.

 

[DuncNZ]

If you are using a short drop shot maker drop the lead into cooking oil in a container about 10-12" deep , it is cheap , doesn't smell bad or smoke , is non toxic and easy to wash off with hot water and detergent and best of all it works . Use carburetor jets for the size , cheap and easy to change , chalk the drip shelf .
There was a shot tower across the road from the gunshop , I am not sure how high the tower was , the lead was melted into ingots of about 20 lbs ,in a furnace at the bottom of the tower . they were sent up the tower where they were put into a gas fired melt pot , the lead was poured onto a gas heated pierced flat bottomed bowl about 3' across, and fell through the air cooling as it went , it fell into a heap at the bottom , it was then was run across big thick glass panes 9- feet wide and 12 feet long and ½" thick , the glass was tilted downwards and the shot ran down the face of the glass , as it ran the uneven shot ran off to the sides , as the shot ran down the glass panes it had to jump gaps between the panes the lightest shot couldn't jump as far as the larger sizes because it didn't have the momentum and dropped into a bin under the gap , this way the shot was sorted into sizes , the uneven shot and unwanted sizes were re melted into ingots in the furnace at the bottom of the tower then sent back up for another go . The whole thing up the tower was run by one woman . The sieve bowl was set to produce one size but obviously many sizes were produced , after sorting, some would be kept ,some would be recycled .

 

[Graybeard2A]

The last word I had from my son’s father-in-law who retired from Doe Run Mining Co. a few years ago after about 38 years service, EPA rules shut down all the ore smelting. They still mine the ore there, but have to ship it to Mexico by rail for smelting, then have the lead shipped back by rail into the US.
The only actual lead melting they have done at Doe Run for years is that related to recycling car batteries.
Doe Run owns a cluster of mines scattered over a several mile wide area 80 miles or more south of St. Louis, MO, and about an hour’s drive SSE of Rolla, MO.
When they hauled some of the ore on the highway from one mine to the smelter on semi’s, the trailer tops had to be tightly tarped down because if even one clod of dirt bounced or was blown out of the top of the trailer and the wrong person saw it, the EPA would send out a Haz-Mat Emergency Response Team in moon suits with respirators, brooms, dust pans, and special vacuums and gather up all they could find.
Then charge Doe Run for the cleanup costs. ( As you may surmise, it was never cheap ).

Lord help us.

ANOTHER CLASSIC FAIL!!! E.P.A.

 

[jimhallam]

Coldfinger: Marvelous video. Thanks. Try cleaning the drip shelf with some steel wool before your next session and the coating it with some chalk.…blackboard chalk will do.
What is the coolant?

BLACKboard chalk ???? Shock, horror! I taught in a school in London (UK). More than 30 years ago the Greater London Council issued an instruction that we had to refer to it as a "chalkboard" ;-) At the same time they forbade the term "manual work". I had failed the Latin course at school (couldn't see the point, unless you wanted to chat to a Catholic priest) but wrote to them to point out that the word "manual" was nothing to do with SEX, but was derived from "manus" --- the Latin for "hand" . Strange that I never got a reply... ...

 

[Dude]

And here I thought Manual was a Latino name.

(just joking)

 

[smoothshooter]

If you are using a short drop shot maker drop the lead into cooking oil in a container about 10-12" deep , it is cheap , doesn't smell bad or smoke , is non toxic and easy to wash off with hot water and detergent and best of all it works . Use carburetor jets for the size , cheap and easy to change , chalk the drip shelf .
There was a shot tower across the road from the gunshop , I am not sure how high the tower was , the lead was melted into ingots of about 20 lbs ,in a furnace at the bottom of the tower . they were sent up the tower where they were put into a gas fired melt pot , the lead was poured onto a gas heated pierced flat bottomed bowl about 3' across, and fell through the air cooling as it went , it fell into a heap at the bottom , it was then was run across big thick glass panes 9- feet wide and 12 feet long and ½" thick , the glass was tilted downwards and the shot ran down the face of the glass , as it ran the uneven shot ran off to the sides , as the shot ran down the glass panes it had to jump gaps between the panes the lightest shot couldn't jump as far as the larger sizes because it didn't have the momentum and dropped into a bin under the gap , this way the shot was sorted into sizes , the uneven shot and unwanted sizes were re melted into ingots in the furnace at the bottom of the tower then sent back up for another go . The whole thing up the tower was run by one woman . The sieve bowl was set to produce one size but obviously many sizes were produced , after sorting, some would be kept ,some would be recycled .

How did they send the molten lead to the top of the tower?
Looks pretty problematic to me if there was much distance involved.

 

[hawkeye2]

"the lead was melted into ingots of about 20 lbs ,in a furnace at the bottom of the tower . they were sent up the tower where they were put into a gas fired melt pot ,"

Solid ingots, remelted in the pot at the top. Transporting molten lead vertically would have been a nightmare even though OSHA wasn't around back then.