Shot makers?

[Britsmoothy]

Has any of you fine gentlemen got any experience with shot makers?
Also would pure lead shot work in a M/L?
Thankyou.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Couldn't tell you the maker of the shot I use. Whatever they have in the 25# bags at the local sporting goods store. I use chilled lead shot, have for 25 years with various muzzleloaders. I've even toyed around with cast balls as Buck-an-ball and buck-shot loads. Nasty, but not practical for hunting (IMHO)

 

[Darkgael]

The only shotmaker that I know of is manufactured by Littleton. I've only read posts about it on other forums. It seemed to me that it required a bit of "fiddling" in order to work acceptably.
They are occasionally available on Ebay.
Pete

 

[Ridge]

Goose Bay offers a shotmaker. Looks almost like a colander....heck, I guess it is a colander of sorts.

I've often thought about ordering one. I have no idea how they work though.

Plus, 25 lbs of shot goes a long way.

 

[Hunter66]

I was once a competitive trap and skeet shooter and we fooled around with them and found them to be a lot of hassle. It was hard to get good round shot. Shot that is not round patterns poorly.

 

[FPDoc]

If there was no shot available at any price, shot-makers would make shot. The reason shot towers are 100ft tall is because it takes a long fall to make round shot. Shot-makers hook to your garage roof and you heat hot lead on the corner of the roof of your house.. hm-mm? Shot-makers make some round shot and a lot of teardrop shot, it doesn't pattern well (you separate the mostly round pellets by letting it roll down an incline and the roundest makes it the farthest). Usually it is more practical to buy shot (I know it is way expensive but so is throwing the same amount of lead downrange with holes in the pattern big enough to drive your jeep through). Bullets can be home-cast as good or better than anything available commercially. Shot cannot. I think you could probably make more "consistently patterning" shot by cutting sheet lead into tiny little squares/cubes, (actually cube shot used to be available as a specialty load as I recall).

Home shot-making, possible and kinda fun = yes.

Practical = not really

Another in the series of "my humble opinion" and "If I remember correctly"

 

[bwhoffman]

the current issue of "backwoodsman" has an article about making your own shot I believe.
imformative.
I also was a competitive trap shooter and found that lawrance and western made the most consistan and hardest shot out there.
running shot in a smoothie, a 25# bag is going to last a while even at todays prices and is well worth the savings and safety as oppossed to making your own, in my somewhat twisted opinion!

 

[mudd turtle]

What size shot can I run through my Bess. mudd turtle.

 

[Rebel]

Any size that will go down the barrel. :grin: Depends on what you want to use it for. Smaller shot for small game and birds, and larger shot for bigger stuff.

 

[mloader40]

I shoot a .36 cal Hatfield using "000" Hornady buchshot (.350) and a .018 patch, this combo works like a charm.
BPWRL

 

[Stumpkiller]

What size shot can I run through my Bess. mudd turtle.

As stated: any size lead shot at all.

I had my best results with #6 in my Bess. No choke at all and the patterns seemed to follow a trumpet shape instead of an even cone. 300 tiny knuckle balls. At 15 yards it was a 12" game shredder but at 35 it was blown open and full of gaps. Plastic cups with the cushion section sliced off helped, but plastic cups in a Bess? Eventually I settled on a paper cartridge around the shot.

 

[Bubba45]

I found this at another site.Its homemade and he said it worked great.He dropped his shot in diesel but I think water soluble oil and water would be a better choice IMO.Also wheelweight lead would be better for shot as it would harden when chilled in the water.

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[paulvallandigham]

Has anyone tried putting home made shot in a case tumbler, to knock off the tails, and make the shot round? You would still need to sort the shot with some kind of screen for sizing, but I would think this might be one way to get the pellets to be round. Just thinking, and curious as to other people's experience.

 

[flintlockmdj]

Check the article in this months "Backwoodsman for easy (?) shot making.

 

[Rod Lassey]

The Museum of the Fur Trade has an original shotmaker, a plate of perforated sheet iron sandwiched into a piece of wood as a handle. I've made a copy, and it works after a fashion. The shot is rather teardrop shaped. If dropped high enough, the shot is more round, but with the dimple typical of Rupert shot (invented apparently by Prince Rupert, cousin of King Charles II, and founder of the HBC). By the way, Rudolf Kurz wrote about making shot at Ft. Union, when nothing else was available. Strips of lead were cubed up, the rolled about in a frying pan with ashes to round them. One of the engages' made his round by chewing!

Making your own shot, while probably not cost effective, is fun and one of those frontier skills that are good to know. I can't recommend the chewing method, however.

Rod

 

[Britsmoothy]

Well today I tried to make shot with a device very similar to your illustration but I was dropping into water/soluble oil mix and it was splattering :cursing: Next time I will try to limit the distance of fall as I,m wondering if the shot does not gain any speed it may not splatter :hmm: We will see. I was shock by how little the holes have to be.

 

[FPDoc]

It is the height of the fall that allows the shot to assume its spherical shape (physics/surface tension and all that), I believe the size of the drip spout/holes in the plate help determine the shot size. Tumbling or chewing etc. might help with uniformity. That melting/rolling in ashes is a very interesting idea and would be hot enough to harden when dumped. The shot would certainly be hardened (if wheel weight alloy) if still hot enough when it hit the water but not so hot it would deform. You can harden bullets/shot etc by heating in the oven and dumping it into water when hot enough.

 

[44-henry]

The only possible motivation to make shot would be if any of the above methods work with bismuth. It's pretty much impossible to buy the stuff now, at any price, and my older guns will have to go unused during waterfowl season unless a source is obtained.