After paying 25.00 for a bag of cheap shot I'm thinking about trying to make some. I've been reading a little about it. I was thinking of useing my Lee production pot. What I would have to do is make up an orifice to drop the lead out the bottom and into some anti freeze. Does anybody know what size hole would be a good starting size. We still have 15 inches of snow on the ground so I might try something this weekend. Tony

257 Rock,
There are home shot makers available for sale or you can make your own. Go to shotgunworld or to trapshooters.com. At SW look at the reloading board and specifically an old thread called making your own shot. It is presently at 20 pages. I have copied all of it and place in a 3 ring binder.

There are some real gems that poeple are using to make shot. I have 4 Littleton shotmakers but as yet I have not made any. I do have some of my items built but am not in production yet.

If you use wheel weights, the most common source, you need to flux the lead to make it functional for shot making. You do need to melt it and make ingots and then melt it again to make the shot.

Good luck.

Thanks for the heads up. The SW site sheds a lot of light on this subject.

If you saw the photos I posted on there, they were from another member who built his own system after a Littleton melted on him. His ideas were very innovative and eliminated some problems.

I read through a few of the posts and saw that they were dropping the shot with only 3/16 to 1/2" to the coolant. Everything that I've heard before was that the shot had to be dropped from a very high position like 10-15 feet and dropped through a tower or pipe so the lead could form a sphere and solidify on the way down before it hit the coolant.
I tried dropping some from a 7' ladder into a bucket of water and got a bunch of flat splatter garbage. The guys telling about the high tower said that is how the commercial shot makers do it. You never know what info you're getting on the internet though.
I may have to try a low drop and see if it works any better.

There are a bunch of pages there to read through. Sometimes I wish there was a reader digest version to sum up all the info.

Lar45,
In this case, the drop is short because the liquid it drops into does the cooling. If you go higher the velocity gets too high and you end up with a flat spot on your shot. Lower can create other problems. Shot towers are over 60 feet high and they cool in the air and the water is just to cushion the shot so it is not damaged by those falling onto it. Shot tower and these systems is a totally different.

If you use water as a coolant, it has to be over 160 degrees or so they are finding out now.