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Posted: 12/30/2013 8:54:04 AM EDT
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Do not get down to this thread much so forgive me
if this is something that has been ran into the ground before! I never saw it: Does anyone pour their own lead Shot? Saw this:The Affordable Lead Shot Maker 50 lbs Lead Shot per hour #7.5 With the cost not coming down was thinking about it! Good or bad idea? Not sure how round this shot would be! An if this is in the wrong thread please move it. Thanks PITA45 
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I've been making my shot, starting in 84. I've got 2 Littleton two holers that I can do about 50 lbs in about a hour.
The same principal as this one, could be made very easy if you have a lathe and a welder. The problem would be the hole drip size for different shot, not much of one tho. |
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I've been making my shot, starting in 84. I've got 2 Littleton two holers that I can do about 50 lbs in about a hour. The same principal as this one, could be made very easy if you have a lathe and a welder. The problem would be the hole drip size for different shot, not much of one tho. That looks interesting. But what is your electric bill? Does any one make a gas one, same size? How round is you shot? Thanks again! PITA45
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Check out The Better Shotmaker
Supposed to do 110 lbs / hr. 220V only. The guy that makes these sells his drippers separately. So you probably could make your own machine and buy his drippers if you were so inclined. Problem with any of these now is finding lead. Lead wheelweights are going the way of the dinosaur so ready access to casting lead is getting troublesome. Rotometals sells bulk lead ingots for something like $1.50 / lb. |
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Check out The Better Shotmaker Supposed to do 110 lbs / hr. 220V only. The guy that makes these sells his drippers separately. So you probably could make your own machine and buy his drippers if you were so inclined. Problem with any of these now is finding lead. Lead wheelweights are going the way of the dinosaur so ready access to casting lead is getting troublesome. Rotometals sells bulk lead ingots for something like $1.50 / lb. I can buy shot right now for a little under $2/lb. |
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yeah, thats what makes shotmaking or casting difficult. If you have to go to places like rotometals for raw lead you are not going to save much making your own shot.
If you have a good source of decent lead, you can save money. Connies has Northwest shot (re-dropped) for $38/bag - but you have to deal with shipping. Rotometals has reclaimed shot for $90 / 50 lbs shipped. But thats still $45/bag for reclaimed shot  Of course you can order a 3000# drum of reclaimed and get down to $1.40 / lb
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yeah, thats what makes shotmaking or casting difficult. If you have to go to places like rotometals for raw lead you are not going to save much making your own shot. If you have a good source of decent lead, you can save money. Connies has Northwest shot (re-dropped) for $38/bag - but you have to deal with shipping. Rotometals has reclaimed shot for $90 / 50 lbs shipped. But thats still $45/bag for reclaimed shot Of course you can order a 3000# drum of reclaimed and get down to $1.40 / lbThat is ridiculous I am buying Lawrence brand shot for that price. |
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Building your own is possible if you have the tooling and skills to do it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acastboolits.gunloads.com%2520300%2520blk&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=shotmaker+site:castboolits.gunloads.com&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&safe=off A littleton shot maker would be a good investment if you don't. http://www.magmaengineering.com/component/banners/click/11/ |
| There are a bunch of people in this area that make their own shot. Unless you can get "deals" on lead you won't save any money. Most of the guys are making large shot(balls) or speciality slugs with a variety of "inserts". They are selling lead in the 1.00$/lb. area. You will need: FREE time, FREE lead. |
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When we were doing F&I War reenacting, my dad made his own drop shot because it was more historically correct.
He used an old tin can with holes punched in the bottom. He would pour a little lead in the can & it would slowly drip out into a coffee can full of water. It was fun and worked for small batches, but for my time & money I'd just as soon buy the shot. |
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When we were doing F&I War reenacting, my dad made his own drop shot because it was more historically correct. He used an old tin can with holes punched in the bottom. He would pour a little lead in the can & it would slowly drip out into a coffee can full of water.It was fun and worked for small batches, but for my time & money I'd just as soon buy the shot. I don't think that was water, it would have either exploded or flattened out. (ask me how I know) I have to use anti freeze or diesel to keep it from being flat |
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I made my own shotmaker from scratch.
I got a wide piece of channel iron, cut one end off at an angle or a bevel. Then I took a piece of wide angle iron about an inch or two longer than the channel iron was wide. I drilled the angle iron for big bolts to be my drippers. The bolts were probably something like a half inch or 5/8ths. Whatever they were, the heads on them were about 5/16ths thick. I would drill from flat to flat a quarter inch hole. Then I would drill a 3/8ths hole axially down the shaft of the bolt, stopping just shy of punching through the head of the bolt. The 1/4" hole would get a Twecco style wire welding tip meant for 0.024" wire. I used a broiler element to heat it. Here are some pics: 
In those pics, I had switched over to Jim Stuart's drippers. I never had much luck with them. I bought say like a pack of 10 that were meant for #7.5's. they spit out #7's no matter what. I have another packet of his dripper bolts around here somewhere meant for #9's. I am thinking I never installed them. The problem with his dripper bolts is you can't put much ass to 'em. They'll snap right off. I dropped into plain ol' water straight from the tap. Nope, never used anti-freeze or diesel fuel either. Blasphemy? I know, right? Anyway, the problem with my rig is it didn't have a thermostat or thermocouple. It would get so hot, the lead droplets would "popcorn" when they hit the water. So I would unplug it, it would cool off and start chirping again like a bunch of birds, just like in all the youtube videos. Then when it slowed down a bunch, I'd plug it back in, it would pick back up. I had bought a cheap digital multimeter from Harbor Freight. It had a temperature probe that would dunk into the melt. I could keep an eye on the digital read out, which was in Celcius, a PITA. After a while I got a good ear for what the temp was based off the chirping. I was getting my lead for free. If you can't get lead for free, it isn't worth it. My buddy's all told me it patterned fine eventhough it wasn't as pretty as factory shot. EDIT #1: my "laddle" or "trough" looks different than anything else you have seen because I made something like an engine hoist for it. It would hang suspended by chains, so I could lower the front end. Getting that angle just right gave the right amount of head pressure (or "pressure head" for all you engineers) for the surface tension of the droplets to form. It also got that angle iron lip parallel to the surface of the water. As you know, water seeks its own level. I used a 20mm ammo can as my main tank. There was a .50BMG or SAW can inside that, that actually caught the shot. There was an angled screen on top of that. The screen was just big enough to let #7 go through. All the "rat turds" would roll down the screen and fall to the bottom of the 20mm ammo can. The left front chain and the right front chain were on all thread hooks so I could independently adust each side and get it parallel to the water's surface. The water would overflow the 20mm ammo can and drop into a huge rubbermaid tub I had underneath it. The main thing with it though was that angle iron lip. I would polish that thing to a mirror and when still cool I would coat it with a graphite spray. After a while, when it had produced some shot, for some reason a droplet would just stop right there on the ramp. Then the next droplet would run into it, then the next one, then the next one. Eventually this "rat turd" would slide off the ramp, into the water, and then get caught by the screen. That dripper bolt was pretty much useless after that because the graphite coating there, I guess, had been eaten away, so it was always more prone to getting "rat turds". Other people swear by soap stone, rubbing their ramps down with that. Jim Stuart makes some stuff he sells as a "ramp coating". I think it gets brushed on. It would be one of those things where if had a thermostat or thermocouple or a PID controller, I might feel comfortable parking it in the middle of a pole barn and letting it run without being baby sit'ed so much. Or parked out in the yard, but as it stands now it's kinda tedious/boring. Which brings me to my last point, none of these commercially made shotmakers come with any sort of "magazine" so you can stack ingots and just let them feed on their own into the melt. EDIT#2: having just a couple 3/8ths rods welded to the bottom of the trough about 2 or 3 inches apart would probably make the perfect "magazine" to stack those lead "biscuits" or "muffins" in. As long as they didn't melt so fast that the pool of molten lead didn't come pouring over the top of the ramp, it would be okay. |
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I don't think that was water, it would have either exploded or flattened out. (ask me how I know) I have to use anti freeze or diesel to keep it from being flat Quoted:
Quoted:
When we were doing F&I War reenacting, my dad made his own drop shot because it was more historically correct. He used an old tin can with holes punched in the bottom. He would pour a little lead in the can & it would slowly drip out into a coffee can full of water.It was fun and worked for small batches, but for my time & money I'd just as soon buy the shot. I don't think that was water, it would have either exploded or flattened out. (ask me how I know) I have to use anti freeze or diesel to keep it from being flat About half of them did. If we try it again I'll suggest anti freeze. This video isn't exactly how we did it, but similar enough. 
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Woah, that swan shot is knarly looking stuff. I bet the pattern is extremely erratic and cuts some serious holes in whatever it hits. I pulled this pic off of google for a more close up look at what swan shot looks like. 
The shot we made had a much less pronounced "neck" since we were technically making drop shot. We'd let it drop about 4 feet before it hit the water. The drop would give it a chance to become more spherical. The shot we made would look like a hybrid between the above swan shot and modern shot. I've only shot swan shot out of a Brown Bess musket, but the shot pattern wasn't much worse than when using modern shot (though the difference was noticeable on paper). I've never shot an animal with it so I don't know what the wound channel would look like, though I can attest that it will do the job on a clay pigeon. I've never shot it out of a modern gun - though a part of me does want to try. Edit - I found this on wiki how: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Lead-Shot Look at "Method 2 of 2: The Shot Tower Method" It is exactly how we did it except we just used a tin can instead of a larger pot. |
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