Shot coolant?

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Does that look like popcorn?
I guess if it does I will just leave you guys to it.
This was wheel weights dripped in water at about 1" then dried and tumbled.
 
Wow nice looking shot joe. Not all all what nine looked like. No idea what I am doing wrong. It just cracked and popped when it hit the water and went all funny. Lead maybe too hit? No idea. This is sure not as straight forward as I thought. I would be more than happy if it came out that way.

I was less than 1/2 inch drop. Would that be the difference maybe!
 
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Using WW lead in 1 lbs ingots. I do not have a thermometer so not sure of lead temp. Maybe I was mistaken thinking it was not too hot as it was not really dribbling out super fast. But sure sounds like what was happening.
 
Not sure what you mean by sort out WW? Short answer is no, just melted it all in to ingots. Not sure of the difference between one or the other?
 
I guess it depends where u got your wheel weights. If you like me and get them from tire shops there will be zinc and steel weights mixed in as well. The steel weights are no big deal but the zinc are. I was assuming that when you said ww lead u meant wheel weights.
 
I built a stainless steel container about 6 x8 inches by about 2 feet deep and bought 2 big jugs of fabric softener. I dropped the shot about 1/4 inch into the softener and it worked great.
Gord
 
I melted the wheel weight lead over 10 years ago. Picked up at all sorts of tire shops over the years. Did not separate the zinc ones out as I would not have known the difference. I was using them for casting pistol bullets at the time and it worked ok for that.

Thanks Greg for the info re your container size.
 
I don't know what to tell u other than u can make shot in water. With out seeing what's going on I can just guess. If u would like to drip in water u may just have to screw around with it a bit and try diffent things untill u get it working.
If u suspect the lead then get some lead that u know is zinc free and try it. Try the softener and report back to us how it worked.
 
Thought I would update you on my endeavours. Tried water again. A little better luck no popcorn but shot all had tails on it. Nothing nice like what joehunt is able to get.

So I tried Fabric Softner. Got the cheapest I could get at Canadian Tire. I tried it first using a 6 3/4 deep x 10 x 3 3/4 inch wide 9mm ammo tin. No luck lots of tails and out of round. Figured it was not deep enough to cool before hitting bottom. So then I tried a bigger ammo tin. 8 1/4 x 12 x 7. Holds 800 5.56 rounds. I put in almost 12 litres of softner. Drop to liquid was 3/4 inch. Much better success. Shot was much rounder. I do have some with short tails and others that look like rat poop. So not perfect but very useable IMO. Had to quit after about an hour as liquid was getting too hot.

I will try again soon. I do have a larger container that will hold about 5 gallons and may splurge and go that way once I am convinced this will work. I will also try to reduce drop distance.

Any pointers on why shot may not be totally round, how to get rid of short tails and rat poop?

Thanks again. I guess I am slowly making progress.
 
So today I was able to test out my shot on skeet. Cannot say I noticed any difference between the stuff I made and bought shot. It was very windy and I managed to shoot a 23 in skeet (my best round mind you). But misses were clearly operator error.

One more question. I understand some coat their shot in powdered graphite. Wondering if this is required and what is the purpose? So the shot does not jamb in drop tube? Is this correct? In the few boxes I loaded, this did not seem to be an issue.
 
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