Made some #9 shot for skeet
[/url]9shot2 by Gary Koenig, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]9shot by Gary Koenig, on Flickr[/IMG]
Shot
- Thread starter gdkmedic
- Start date
vagrantviking
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- High River, Alberta
Nice job!
Making shot is a lot more finicky than many realize. Most home made shot I've seen was 30% deformed pellets or more. You must have your process nailed.
Making shot is a lot more finicky than many realize. Most home made shot I've seen was 30% deformed pellets or more. You must have your process nailed.
I agree.
I know our shot had a lot of deformed pellets.
Haven't made any for several years. It would probably take a while to get it running and producing reasonable shot again.
Temperature of lead, cooling liquid and drop all factor in.
vagrantviking
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- High River, Alberta
One fellow who I used to shoot with said it would take an hour to dial in everything. Then someone would open the shop door and the cool breeze would be enough to mess up the works for 10 minutes again.
Got any tips for a guy that just built one. Haven't turned it on yet, too cold. I ordered drippers from oasis, the rest is cut and weld. What are you using for coolant? Wal-Mart girl looked at me a bit when I bout 7 gallons of fabric softener. Got my ramp polished, sprayed with graphite. I also built a shelf above ladle that hold my lee pot, figure it can't hurt to fill with premelted lead. My lead is from pistol range, melted, cleaned, in 1 lb bars. Any tips would be great.
I think you'll need some wheel weights or some other source for antimony (and maybe arsenic?) to provide the surface tension needed for the dropped liquid to adhere/form into a sphere when rolling down and off the ramp into the coolant.
There is no guarantee in the composition of range lead.
We tried range lead in our shot maker and it didn't work well. Wheel weight lead worked fine, but range lead didn't.
I don't remember if it didn't flow properly or the shot came out poorly. We just went back to ww lead.
I've been making shot for several years, using a homemade shot maker. I have a ton of range lead but not many wheel weights, so I have to make due. I typically mix 5pts range lead to 1pt wheel weight. My shot is not as nice as the OPs, but it is pretty good. I use fabric softener as coolant.
So it looks like people don't like range lead for shot makers, suggested I need antimony. I thought antimony made lead harder. I looked up the BHN of shot, it ranges from 5.56 to 9.94 bhn, chart I looked at had about 15 makers listed, gun club, AA etc. According to my hardness tester, my lead is about 16 bhn. Suggestions?
Well, looking up antimony content of pistol bullets, it says industry standards is 6%, #8 shot should be 6% antimony, so confused as to why it doesn't work. Remember though I haven't actually tried making any shot yet, so maybe it will work, maybe not.
I'm not sure how much antimony is in factory pistol bullets, or lead core rifle bullets for that matter, but antimony content of factory shot ranges from 2.5-7% IIRC depending on manufacturer and rating for "magnum" vs "chilled". I'm not sure how much you need to make shot effectively either; it could be as little as 1% depending on your setup but the addition of tin from range lead is probably the problem. While tin does help the alloy to make harder bullets it's use is to allow the liquid alloy more fluidity so it fills mold cavities better. This is bad for making lead spheres without a mold. I think this is where arsenic from COWW comes in to help the natural or spontaneous formation of spheres.
The home shot maker has to think of things differently than a factory does as we can't control variables the way they can. That's why you see so much variation in coolant types and rigs in forums and Youtube. What works for one person can fail miserably for another. Personally, I never got fabric softener to give me anything other than headaches but undiluted car antifreeze has been great. It's possible the range scrap you have has enough cast bullets from COWW in it to work. You'll have to try to find out and experiment based on your results.
Some tips though and hopefully others will add or correct me if needed:
-keep the ramp of the dripper as close as possible to the surface of the coolant (0.25")
-keep the ramp as hot or hotter than the rest of the rig
-temp of melted lead hot enough to allow nozzles to work but not too much more (my PID is set to 360C but only use it in summer when above 27C)
-leave the layer of dross on top alone - don't stir and flux in the dripper - this means cleanest possible lead flowing through nozzles
-have a trigger ignite propane torch handy to re-heat the nozzles or ramp as needed to clear dams
-more safety prep and gear as there are more things to distract you compared to casting bullets - depending on type coolant can overheat and ignite also
The home shot maker has to think of things differently than a factory does as we can't control variables the way they can. That's why you see so much variation in coolant types and rigs in forums and Youtube. What works for one person can fail miserably for another. Personally, I never got fabric softener to give me anything other than headaches but undiluted car antifreeze has been great. It's possible the range scrap you have has enough cast bullets from COWW in it to work. You'll have to try to find out and experiment based on your results.
Some tips though and hopefully others will add or correct me if needed:
-keep the ramp of the dripper as close as possible to the surface of the coolant (0.25")
-keep the ramp as hot or hotter than the rest of the rig
-temp of melted lead hot enough to allow nozzles to work but not too much more (my PID is set to 360C but only use it in summer when above 27C)
-leave the layer of dross on top alone - don't stir and flux in the dripper - this means cleanest possible lead flowing through nozzles
-have a trigger ignite propane torch handy to re-heat the nozzles or ramp as needed to clear dams
-more safety prep and gear as there are more things to distract you compared to casting bullets - depending on type coolant can overheat and ignite also
Going to give it a try on Monday, I have a 4x8 room on back of garage, I'll heat to room temp. I have outside air hooked up to mask for painting, so not breathing fumes. I have a 15 gallon overflow tank with a 5 gallon tank to drop into, 1/4" drop. Lead was cleaned when making bars, but I set my lee pot above ladle, with bottom pour I think it should be pretty clean. I don't have a pid, but bought both lyman and rcbs temp probes, so I should be able to get a good reading on both. And yes if I get it working I'll do pid. Good tip on having a torch handy, I was already thinking maybe give ramp a heat up with torch, maybe not needed, but I wondered if ramp may not stay as hot. As for coolant, I have to try fabric softener, cost and what oasis recommends. We'll see how it goes. And on oasis, nice guy, talked for about 5 minutes when I ordered nozzles, he said any problems give him a call, I thought that was pretty good, considering only a $50.00 sale. I'll post back my outcome.
Well I'll call it a success, I've only tacked ramp on either end because I wasn't sure of angle, I should of heated with torch, so only ones on either end produced shot, others just pooled on ramp, I used graphite on ramp by the way. Anyway 5 minutes with 2 double drippers going gave me about 1 1/2 cups of nice round shot, there were tear drops and crap from pooling drippers, but I'm thrilled with results. Pistol range scrap works fine. First time uploading a pic, so may or may not be a pic with this.
Attachments
And if anyone is interested, cost
Double drippers from oasis $65.00 US shipped
1500 watt element from Wal-Mart $34.56
5 gallons of fabric softener from can tire $61.22
I had metal to make ladle and ramp, could buy for 20 bucks though.
So I'm probably into it for 200 bucks, plus I bought temp probes, but most people getting into this probably have one. So if I can make 3 bags of shot I'm even. Not that it matters, more for the fun of it.
Double drippers from oasis $65.00 US shipped
1500 watt element from Wal-Mart $34.56
5 gallons of fabric softener from can tire $61.22
I had metal to make ladle and ramp, could buy for 20 bucks though.
So I'm probably into it for 200 bucks, plus I bought temp probes, but most people getting into this probably have one. So if I can make 3 bags of shot I'm even. Not that it matters, more for the fun of it.
