Lead Shot

Josh

Josh

Well-Known Member
I went to the range today to test out my new Remington 870, since I had the entire range to myself I decided to run a few drills since I needed to check for malfunctions. Once I ran 50 rounds through it with zero issues and effectively blew all my ammo I switched to mining the berms.

I normally get about a lb or 2 every time and once i got this ammount I walked the skeet range. Upon arriving there I found piles upon piles of lead shot. Literally scooping it up with my hands, I had never thought of trying the shotgun range. I collected 33.5 lb in about 30 minutes, all of it being between #7-8.

Now for the question, how do you use this lead? Does it resemble WW or Lino? Or is it only a sweetener alloy? Any words of wisdom are appreciated.

Josh
 
fiver

fiver

Well-Known Member
if it's magnum type it's In the 5% antimony range.
if it's umm walmart cheap-o packs it's a lot lower percentage.[like 2%]
depending on the cliental and the type of shoots you have at the range it can be more one than the other. but that would be a clue as to it's percentage.
it all will however have a good percentage of arsenic, and unfortunately a lot of oxidization to deal with.
melt it down, flux and reduce the oxides a couple of times.
throw some tin at it [there ain't none in it] cast some boolits, shoot them and get some more lead.
heck mix it with your ww's 1 to 1 you'll either bump the ww alloy [or won't] or cut it with some soft lead if it seems hard, then cut the ww's.
for the majority of your shooting a point of this or that ain't gonna matter.
unless you are tuning the diameter of a mold to exactly fit a certain gun.
you can tune the bhn of oven cooked alloy easily enough too.
 
Josh

Josh

Well-Known Member
Most of the shells there were Winchester AA, Remington gold shells, Remington Upland Game (dove loads?), and some cheapie Federal bulk box. I do know a crap ton of those guys reload their 12's I sold 3 55 gal bags of Winchester AA 1x hulls to 3 different guys there.
 
fiver

fiver

Well-Known Member
call it 4% antimony, and you'll be right close.
I know Remington and the Lawrence brand are 5% in the 7-1/2 and 8 sizes.
 
Josh

Josh

Well-Known Member
So basically i need to seperate the shot from the projectiles and add 2% tin to the total weight and I will have a basic WW alloy. That is great, thanks Fiver.
 
KHornet

KHornet

Well-Known Member
I would love to get my hands on about a thousand pounds of Mag shot, or any portion thereof.
 
F

freebullet

Guest
Use it for bullets once you figure out the hardness.

Most magnum shot contains arsenic. Makes for hard bullets when heat treated. I happened into a deal on 50 lbs and wish I could have got more. It was magnum shot and had a graphite coating that smoldered real well when smelted. It burned right off but, do that outside.
 
Brad

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
I need to look again but I had found a local place that sold reclaimed shot for a buck a pound. Would be a good source of some Sb and As too. Wouldn't be a bad thing to mix with pure and a little tin.
 
D

Dusty Bannister

Well-Known Member
I frequent a small metal recycle facility and noticed a bucket of wet oily trashy shot. It was just sold as scrap by a traveling carnival. It went home with me.
This was large shot, but smaller than BB and I let some dry out pretty well before further handling. I melted it down, starting from a cold pot to avoid steam issues and after skimming off debris, fluxed and ladle cast some sample bullets. Then added about 1% tin, cast some more sample bullets, and then added more tin to make up a 2% total and again poured sample bullets. The resulting 2% samples after a couple of months sitting now measure .074 on the Cabin Tree tester. That is about 12.5 BHN with the lower tin blends probably reading slightly softer.

It is a little messy, but cleans up nice, casts nice, and makes a good looking bullet. I am going to leave it just as it is and not be in a hurry to decide it's final use. Dusty
 
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