Home made shot

[stone knife]

Is anyone on here using home made shot for hunting, I have a TVM Fowler on the way soon and was playing with the idea of some home brewed shot but wondered what is the best way to go about making some.

[Dennis Glazener]

First you find a shot tower that you can use (here's one you can check) http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks/shottowr.shtml Then pour molten lead into a sieve like affair and let the molten lead pellets drop into the water at the bottom of the shot tower. I understand they form round balls on the way down and the water is to cushion their fall.

Shouldn't cost too much to get into productions
Dennis

[bob in the woods]

I have a Ruperts shot maker which was made by Peter Goebel [ sp?]
I make shot all the time for my 10 bore. Cooking dinner now, but will give instructions re how I do it later

[bob in the woods]

Back again......take your shot maker, and put some nice burning charcoal on it. Rest the thing over a pail of water. You can play around with the height, but the shot will splatter on the water if not high enough.
Melt your lead and dribble it over the coals, and it will find it's way to the holes in the bottom of the shot maker and drop out from there. Without the charcoal, you get lead strings    I make shot with lead free "pewter" , for ducks and geese.   

[Hungry Horse]

I have a contraption I inherited from a deceased friend. It is a frame with a piece of round tubing set at a 45 degree angle. The tube has a threaded end on it. that different size nozzles can be screwed into. A Burnzo-matic torch is clamped in such a way to direct heat on the nozzle. A rod of lead cast in a piece of small angle iron turned to form a "V" with a couple of pieces of the same angle iron welded on as end caps, serves as the mold for the lead rods. Simply fire it up, put a coffee can of water under the nozzle and go take a nap. The lead will slowly melt and drop out one drop at a time from the very small hole in the nozzle. It will stop making shot when it runs out of lead or propane. This thing was commercially produced by someone, but the labels are all long gone.

                         Hungry Horse

[SCLoyalist]

Do a Google search on 'shot making machine' and you'll get several leads.   Here's a link to one.

http://www.thebettershotmaker.org/about.html

[Scott Semmel]

I have oneof the shotmakers that are on the provided link. Never used still in the box with instructions, If anyone is interested email me.

[northmn]

One addition is that Rupert found if he used "poisened" lead he would get rounder shot.  WW contains a touch of arsenic which is the "poisened lead" .  There have been molds for shot and another method is to cut off very short chunks of wire and roll it between two plates (hobbing)  It was said mountain men made buckshot by cullting up RB and rolling between two flat rocks.  Original shot tened to be larger tahn what we use today and was classed by the bird hunted, swan shot was about the size of #3 or 4 buck (actually #4 buck was originally swan shot until the Feds made swan hunting illegal. Goose shot was probably about the size of T shot and duck shot somewhere around BB or a little smaller.  Bird shot was finer and was used for "birds". 

DP