Homemade shot maker

[cheese1566]

So much for my fondue pot. Not enough heat as I was told.
Oh well, I'll still cut it down for a mold warming plate.

[mac1911]

I recently purchased a jim stewart better shotmaker, love it. BUT a customer of mine when he learned I like to shoot,reload ect ect. Says " I got a shot maker I never used, still in the envelope". As I was thinking what kind of shotmaker fits in a envelope. Well he dropped off the shotmaker today?
Its a Econshot the home shotmaker, check it out

[Four Fingers of Death]

simple enough, probably wouldn't be too economical for large quantities with the blow torch as the heat scource It would be fine for smaller quantities. What the last picture of?

[mac1911]

last pic is the dripper that mounts inside the tube. I may try it for the novelty of it

[krag35]

What is the dripper made of?

[mac1911]

looks like a hollow 3/8 bolt with the tip ground down to a point with a very small hole drilled on the angle of the tip

[vinceb]

if you want to build a shotmaker .... there is an old shotgun digest with a review on shot makers . it covered all shotmakers produced at the time . good photos .
ask around .
ramp length and angle are pretty important .
used to drop my shoot into diesel fuel ...scary stuff .

[gunlovingsob]

mernards, $10.88 for a single electric cook top burner, ran it up to 600 deg, then it shut down, removed guts from housing to allow parts to be in open air, mounted burner on an aluminum holder, holds up to 700 deg and temp controll working perfect to maintain any temp below that, cast my own littleton style drip pan using lost foam casting i learned from youtube, works great

[Faret]

mernards, $10.88 for a single electric cook top burner, ran it up to 600 deg, then it shut down, removed guts from housing to allow parts to be in open air, mounted burner on an aluminum holder, holds up to 700 deg and temp controll working perfect to maintain any temp below that, cast my own littleton style drip pan using lost foam casting i learned from youtube, works great

Got A pic!

[P.K.]

How about uniformity(sp)? Most of the home cast I have seen end up looking like tear drops. Has anyone been able to build a dripper and not have to or calculate the length of the drop for small stuff say #8 or #9 sized shot? I'd like to cast my own, only if I could get consistant patterning out of the drop.


As for a dripper I found some guy from my old stomping grounds selling a plate steel melting "pan", something he rigged and didn't look all that dificult to do, for $150.00!!! The problem with his idea was all of it shaped up like tear drops hence the question of drop distance. From the pic's he was driping it directly into his cooling medium.

[Russel Nash]

Taking a good luck at that picture, my first guess is that there is actually a little bit of a burr at the end of the ramp.

Just as the droplet is about to...well...drop off the end of the ramp it snags on that burr and is pulled into a tear drop shape. Just go over it lightly with a file or some sandpaper.

I get my ramp as close as possible to the water/coolant...so about 1/4" to 3/8". So just like in your pic, the back edge of my ramp is beveled too.

The only other thing I could tell you is to switch to a graphite spray instead of using soapstone.

But only spray it on the ramp when the ramp is cool. To do it while it is hot yields some interesting results.

There is a pretty good thread on the shotgunworld forums, all 38 pages of it:

http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/view...5776&start=740

[Russel Nash]

oh...yeah...IMO, the length of the drop has nothing to do with shot size.

Shot size is a factor of a few things, but mainly it is the orifice size. I bought the drippers from Jim Stewart for #7.5 and #9 shot. The #9 orifices are obviously smaller than the #7.5's.

Other factors include:

heat
head pressure (how much molten lead is uphill or upstream of the dripper pushing downwards on the dripper)

(combining heat and head pressure changes the viscosity of the lead. hotter makes it runnier like water)

orifice inlet hole

composition of the alloy mix

and last but not least....the alignment of the planets...and sometimes how you hold your mouth when you look at the shotmaker while it's running.



supposedly for a #7.5 orifice you want to use a #78 drill bit.