Casting from shotgun shot. Worth it?

[Lost Dog]

Alright, here we go with the old Lost Dog limping down another trail. I did a search before posting but failed to turn up anything. So here goes.

Ya see every now and then where some guy, who lists EVERY detail of his load will mention his rounds were cast from chilled shot. And it does this and that. And it's wonderful.
Truth, or something from the south end of a north bound bull?

I got a line on some reclaimed #8 cleaned, polished, and grafited for $1.71 a pound to my gate. And guys, to an old retired cop living off his pension, that sounds like a deal. So watcha think? Deal, or walk away? Remember, I have zero access to WW anywhere nearby at all.

 

[Tony]

The graphite can/will cause problems, in particular, large amounts of dross. Shot contains Pb, Sb and As. I prefer to use shot in small quantities to get As into my alloy. If you want/need to use shot, look for reclaimed shot that has been minimally cleaned and has not had graphite reapplied. It should cost much less. Check RotoMetals. They sell both.

 

[RicinYakima]

Price is right, but you will spend about 1 hour per pot getting it processed into ingots. "Been there and done that!"

 

[fiver]

your gonna end up with an alloy of about 5% antimony and a little more arsenic than necessary for good square bullets.
I have often thought about buying a drum of reclaimed shot from roto-metals and asking for it washed but not sorted or cleaned.
then order the same amount of pure lead and mix them together 60-40 and adding in 1% tin.
this would give me an approximate alloy of 2.5% antimony 1% tin and about .3% arsenic.
or a perfect alloy to really manipulate up and down the scale of hardness with quenching or air cooling.

re-melting the shot's alloy down and cleaning it would of course be a pain, but if you have the time and could get a good supply of the alloy I think it would be worth the effort.

 

[Ian]

Definitely get it "raw", not graphited if at all possible. BTDT too. Graphite makes one heck of an insulator and make it really hard to melt it all down, then you have a royal mess of graphite goop to contend with. There will be a lot of fine dirt embedded in the knarly "raw" shot pellets, but it's a lot easier to deal with than graphite. I agree with Fiver that you'll want to try and source some cheap, closer-to-pure lead scrap to mix with shot so as to dilute the antimony a bit. And you might still need a splash of tin or good garage-sale pewter (1% is plenty) to help things along.

 

[Lost Dog]

Sounds like an awful lot of mess. And it does sound like something that I'd better forget about. Knew in the back of my mind it was too good to be true. Oh well. Never mind.

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Josh]

The stuff is pretty hard to melt even in raw form due to all of the surface area per ball, I have found it best to melt down a half a pot of range scrap then add the shot to the already melted lead. If I didn't have a range that it could be picked up with a shovel, I wouldn't use it.

 

[Lost Dog]

Ok. I get the picture. For a guy with no big smelting setup out in the shop or yard, and using a simple 10# pot in the kitchen, it just ain't all that wonderful. Got it. That's why I asked. Didn't want to buy 50# of shot only to be stuck with it. I'll pursue other sources when they become known to this unit. (Sorry, old soldier/police and don't know how to communicate as a civilian still )

 

[fiver]

I ain't so good at cop talk [Allen's department] but I could probably still muddle through the soldier speak.

 

[KHornet]

I have cast with shot when it was 15.00 or so a bag, with a preference to Mag shot. That was a long time ago however. Used to read a lot of Paco Kelly's articles, and in some of them, he has his receipt for using mag shot was why I started messing with it. That was perhaps 20-25 years ago, and I found it to be very satisfactory IMO.

 

[Missionary]

Good morning
Redlands has reclaimed shot for $59 for a #50 to your door. I just typed "Reclaimed lead" in my Bing search and there they were.
Did not see any word on "regrafited" it just says "cleaned".
Mike in Peru