Shot dripping?

buji88

buji88

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Pitt Meadows
Hey guys,

Hopefully, this can stay here, I know this is bullet making, but this is more a casting question than anything.

Do any of you drip your own shot? What are you using for a dripper? Home made or bought?
 
Short answer - not yet! Read a great writeup on internet by a British guy who goes by name "sitsinhedges" - complete dimensions for build-your-own. Bought 7 specific sized (.025" ??) nozzles from eBay to drip #7 size shot for my 28 gauges, also have the controller and SSR, 8" stove top 240 Volt element, welder, many 100's pounds of wheel-weight ingots, etc. Just missing a couple of those "roundtoits" that were supposed to show up aplenty after I retired from "work" - 4 1/2 years ago!!
 
Awesome! I've been reading tons about it as well. It seems some of the biggest challenges is cooling the shot once it drips, and the height from the dripper to the coolant. Let us know how it goes!
 
I have a friend who drops his own shot. He has a home brewed pot with welding wire nozzles that drop onto a short inclined tray that rolls into a container of fabric softener,
Takes a bit of fine tuning to get it right, and is time consuming but doable with a propane burner ans big steel pot.
 
I made a homemade shot dripper a few years ago, it can be done if you are determined enough, have the spare time and a source of lead. I make my shot with mostly range scrap, mixed with a bit of Linotype (I have lots of Linotype). For coolant, I use fabric softener. My shot is not perfectly round, but not bad. It works just fine for 5-stand at my local range. There is some info available online (including plans for a dripping pan) but you have to hunt for it. There are several YouTube videos of various homemade setups.
 
From my reading water soluble oil that is used as a coolant in machining works well. A friend of mine did the home shot thing. He had good luck with the water soluble oil, kept the drip ledge very close to the surface of the coolant (like about 1/4" above the surface) and periodically rubbed the drop ledge with soapstone to keep the alloy from sticking. Produced pretty good quality shot for practice.
 
ted_dent said:
From my reading water soluble oil that is used as a coolant in machining works well. A friend of mine did the home shot thing. He had good luck with the water soluble oil, kept the drip ledge very close to the surface of the coolant (like about 1/4" above the surface) and periodically rubbed the drop ledge with soapstone to keep the alloy from sticking. Produced pretty good quality shot for practice.
Click to expand...

My Nephew's and I do the same thing. Bought a wide stand alone frying pan from value village for 5 bucks and drilled three holes in the side of it and inserted lead shot dripper nozzles that we had our cousin make up for us in his machine shop. They look exactly as these ones I found on ebay.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lead-Shot-...691003?hash=item1cba00adfb:g:ZdoAAOSwehVakE23

Played around on a Saturday afternoon to experiment with a wood shelf we made to get the correct slope and temperature of the lead. Honestly we were done experimenting in about 2 hours and the whole project took about 5 hours. Now the shot isn't perfectly round all the time but it is good enough for upland game and practicing. We should have done it years ago and now the hardest thing to do is find the components at a good price. You save a bit of money making your own shot but it sure is fun.

We make up a bunch of shot on a Saturday in the winter in my garage and it usually lasts us for the next year.
 
hunter64 said:
My Nephew's and I do the same thing. Bought a wide stand alone frying pan from value village for 5 bucks and drilled three holes in the side of it and inserted lead shot dripper nozzles that we had our cousin make up for us in his machine shop. They look exactly as these ones I found on ebay.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lead-Shot-...691003?hash=item1cba00adfb:g:ZdoAAOSwehVakE23

Played around on a Saturday afternoon to experiment with a wood shelf we made to get the correct slope and temperature of the lead. Honestly we were done experimenting in about 2 hours and the whole project took about 5 hours. Now the shot isn't perfectly round all the time but it is good enough for upland game and practicing. We should have done it years ago and now the hardest thing to do is find the components at a good price. You save a bit of money making your own shot but it sure is fun.

We make up a bunch of shot on a Saturday in the winter in my garage and it usually lasts us for the next year.
Click to expand...

So, a deep electric frying pan? A long dead member at our range used to use nozzles from an oil furnace. Now I want to build one just to say I did it. :)
 
The electric frying pan is a great idea, I wonder if I could find a cast iron one rather then aluminum one...Hunter we all want to see your set up!
 
I’m just getting rolling on dripping shot.

I’ve made up a pan, out of some pretty heavy steel, and I’m planning on using an electric PID controlled element for heat.

Where can a fella find orifice designs for making #4 shot? It can’t be as simple as drilling a .040” hole can it?

The biggest reason for making my own shot, is $4/lb for shot is just too dear, especially when I’m sitting on a ton of lead already....
 
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