Help with shotmaker please!!

[encoreman]

Hi all, I have built a homemade shotmaker. I bought James Stewart drippers and thought I had it all together, but 1st attempt I made about 20 lbs. of junk that ranged from clumps that resembled pineapples to small frisbee's. I may not have gotten the bib or ramp smooth enough, I had it covered with soapstone. For the longest time after I got the lead level above the drippers, nothing came out, finally 3 started and was more of a stream than drips. Finally got them to sort of drip and they would slide down the ramp. Is the ramp not steep enough, or what. And I thought this would be a piece of cake. BTW I am using a ammo can with Sun detergent in it.

[shotman]

its NOT the shotmaker. Would guess you bought ww junk off feebay that has zinc in it
DO NOT BUY MELTED WW they dony care what they sell same for some here. ZINC WILL SCREW UP A SHOTMAKER you can use back stop lead that some sell but ONLY LEAD ww will work good

[Faret]

How hot was the lead? I have found about 625 works good in mine. Also if the lead is running down the ramp rather than rolling the ramp is getting too hot. I made mine with a gas turkey burner and had to shield the ramp from the heat. My ranp is set at about 18 Deg.

[Deacon Stone]

Is there anyway to post a picture? Its worth a 1000 guess. The ramp need to be very smooth and you don't need a lot of soap stone. Maybe more head pressure. Meaning you need to have more lead above the dippers. And I have noticed that flat lead shapes can be due to water in the coolant. We can tell a lot more from a picture. Ran 100 lbs of lead today and not one bad bead all day. It takes a lot of practice to get that to happen.

Deacon Stone

[encoreman]

It's not the lead, I smelted my own wheel weights and picked out the zincos. Maybe too hot, I don't have a thermometer, guess now is a great time to get one. I was thinking maybe the angle of the ramp wasn't enough. Anyone have an angle that is working for you? I will take some pics of the shot, the maker is at my work warehouse. Thanks for the comments, I had a sneaky feeling it wasn't going to go right the 1st time, heck if it did it wouldn't be fun would it. I am using straight Sun detergent, NO water.

[heathydee]

A ramp angle of around 30 degrees may improve things . Too shallow an angle will not let a droplet fall free before the next runs into it. The droplets need to fall about 3/8" onto the ramp and then have two or three bounces before entering the coolant which is placed as close to the lip of the ramp as possible . Here is a link to a description of how I do it .http://garagegunsmithing.com/index.p...php&f=32&t=693

[RP]

Alot of things will effect what kind of shot you get lead temp angles outside temps coolant. I got a shot maker and if I moved it out of its spot it changed how it worked very slight change in angles effected it. Also I would be running it and it would just start to give me a fit so I shut it down let it cool off some and fire it back up, something so simple but it worked. I found if i get flat lead shot its dropping to far to coolant or hitting it to hard. Good luck and keep playing with it. I did not use soap stone but grease and flux on my ramp even oil it will form a film like a cast iron frying pan if your ramp is steal not aluim.

[Ozark Shiner]

I built a shot maker this weekend and ran it through a "proof of concept" test run. It kind of worked. The problem I had was that lead did not want to run down the ramp very well. I tried having it polished to a mirror finish, I tried roughing it up and using standard chalk. I tried spray graphite. Nothing seemed to last too long and the droplets started globbing up. I varied the angle of the ramp from pretty flat to very steep. I was using a flame burner and a wheel weight / lead / tin alloy (about Lyman #2).

I was getting good distinct droplets, they jut weren't getting out of the way. They stuck.

Any ideas of what to try next ???

I dropped in to water (I know - not ideal) for the test run. I got about 30% usable shot. I think mostly due to the coolant and the fact that I didn't have the lip close enough to the coolant.

I'd appreciate any tips you might have.

Thanks - Shiner

[RP]

Look at the post above Ozark Skiner and maybe these will help.





In one of the pics you see a red film on the shotmaker that is the grease I put on it. You also see it sitting on the table in a tobacco tin use a radiator brush to put it on so it dont melt I also used oil out of the coolant tank and flux not the water base kind. This may help you in the way your thinking to make lead stick to something it must be clean thats why they use flux the dirtier the metal its not going to stick. If i got it to dirty I flux to clean it up some to clean I add grease. ramp to cold I use a torch to heat it up to hot I use some of the coolant to cool it off. As soon as you learn what to do when its having a problem making shot is not hard but getting to that point most of the time is the problem.

[Ozark Shiner]

Ricky P - That is awesome ! Thank you for taking the time to add those pictures and your advice. I'm sure a lot of people will benefit from your experiences !

Thanks for taking the time.

I'm sure a lot of other people would be interested in what type of grease that is that you use on the ramp ? Looks like it works really well.

Shiner.

[RP]

You can buy the grease from Mr steward google better shot maker I want to say his first name is Jim. He sells the it I tried other grease but did not work as well as his did.

[oscar]

I built a shot maker this weekend and ran it through a "proof of concept" test run. It kind of worked. The problem I had was that lead did not want to run down the ramp very well. I tried having it polished to a mirror finish, I tried roughing it up and using standard chalk. I tried spray graphite. Nothing seemed to last too long and the droplets started globbing up. I varied the angle of the ramp from pretty flat to very steep. I was using a flame burner and a wheel weight / lead / tin alloy (about Lyman #2).

I was getting good distinct droplets, they jut weren't getting out of the way. They stuck.

Any ideas of what to try next ???

I dropped in to water (I know - not ideal) for the test run. I got about 30% usable shot. I think mostly due to the coolant and the fact that I didn't have the lip close enough to the coolant.

I'd appreciate any tips you might have.

Thanks - Shiner

Use chalk (the blackboard type) on the ramp

[Russel Nash]

do an advanced search here for my screenname and specify this subforum.

I was doing a lot of trial and error at first when I was about to throw in the towel.

Then I changed up two or three things simultaneously and VOILA! it started running right.

One of the things was using graphite spray.

The other was using a torpedo level/protractor to determine the angle that the laddle was sloped at.

Here are the vids of my shotmaker:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zahDL...os=8J-KecYpA7M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I433C...os=RpIvm232iFw