Shotgun shot for casting revolver bullets?

Bugkiller99

Bugkiller99

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I was gifted 100 lbs or so or shotgun shot. Misc sizes, all together inside of 2 lengths of capped 4” PVC pipe. I have not inspected it.

I am not a shotgun reloader.

I am not that familiar with the content of shotgun shot. I was wondering if I could melt them down and cast them for revolver loads? Target loads, nothing high pressure.

Checked at a couple of sites, seems lead and antimony are the elements mentioned.

Any thoughts?
 
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Absolutely!!!!

100 #'s will make a pile of bullets.

Typically I use this setup filled with 150/160# of recovered bullets from the berms.
gYfZozu.jpg


That yields 100#+ of 8/9bhn alloy.
Yj0Qjnh.jpg


I use that 8/9bhn alloy for all my revolver/pistol/rifle cast bullet needs with loads 25,000psi or less.

There are casters on the castboolits website that don't have access to lead so that's all they buy/use. Is lead shotgun shot for their casting needs.
 
Absolutely! It will either be "Regular Shot" or "Magnum Shot". For run in the mill pistol bullets it will either be a little soft or a little hard.

I own Lyman #46 and #49 and Cast bullet handbook #3, They all have formulas for making different alloys of different hardness!

If that is too much work, two suggestions, trade it to a shotgun shooter, or trade it to a bullet caster (amateur or commercial!) Before lead prices went crazy, I was out of work, and sold my "Stategic Reserve" of 350 pounds of range lead to a commercial caster and got 45 cents a pound for it! That was 12 years ago!

Ivan
 
"Hardened" shot is most often lead and antimony. To cast a good bullet requires the addition of a small amount of tin, which can be done in a number of ways. The tin allows the alloy to flow into the corners of the mold better.
 
I'll have to say no. At least not in any of MY handguns.

I recycle lead bullets from my own personal target berm. But they were my own boolits, with known composition. I have melted shotgun shot in the past, but only for "balls" used in black powder firearms.

For many years, I followed the Lyman #2 formulas. I have used lead pipe and other forms of pure lead, but they were always mixed with tin and antimony. Back in the day I had an almost unlimited supply of linotype.

When the supply of hard stuff ran out I switched exclusively to 100% wheel weights. Al least in my area I found the consistency to be quite good.

If you know the alloy of the lead shot, blend it as needed. But before you use it in a gun check the bhn.

I started casting in 1975 and have yet to lead a barrel.
 
I have used old shot and it worked fine as is, but several years ago, I was given about 250 lbs. of reclaimed shot from a gun club. It had a slightly greasy coating on much of it. It melted and was usable for bullets, but very messy to work with, apparently because of the coating. I'd pay for lead before I'd use such shot again.

I have a hardness tester, pretty handy when using materials of unknown hardness. Most shot will be hard enough to use without doing anything to it for for handgun bullets. Seems it's around 12 BHN or so but that's a generalization and actual hardness may vary considerably. You may have to mix to get your alloy just right.
 
Bugkiller99 said:
I was gifted 100 lbs or so or shotgun shot. Misc sizes, all together inside of 2 lengths of capped 4” PVC pipe. I have not inspected it.

I am not a shotgun reloader.

I am not that familiar with the content of shotgun shot. I was wondering if I could melt them down and cast them for revolver loads? Target loads, nothing high pressure.

Checked at a couple of sites, seems lead and antimony are the elements mentioned.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

that was square one for me. Fastest route to a pot of molten lead was through a sack of shot.
It's a good source of antimony, it works, but it could use some tin to work better.
I've used lead free solder for this addition.
 
I have a cabintree lead hardness tester. If it were me and I didn't have one I would melt all the shot I had and cast a couple of bullets. Send them to me or someone else that can test it and see what I needed to add to get my alloy where I want it to be. If you need a harder metal you can get what you need from Rotometals.
 
Of course. Melt a few pounds and pour/load/shoot the bullets. If you need to add tin, you can do that, but shot is intended to move down steel barrels at less than 1400 fps.

I will not use battery lead, but have used lead pipe salvage, linotype, wheelweights, new 'gifted' shot, all with excellent results. Shot is less 'trashy' on initial melt than is pipe or wheelweights. Be sure to flux the molten metal deep and often!
 
Most lead shot is tumbled in graphite before packaging. I'm not sure what that would do to your casting metal? Perhaps it will flux out, but I don't know.
 
Mike-AK said:
Most lead shot is tumbled in graphite before packaging. I'm not sure what that would do to your casting metal? Perhaps it will flux out, but I don't know.
Click to expand...

It floats on the surface of the molten lead. Pellets for pellet guns do the same thing when you melt them do with their heavy graphite coating.

What comes out of the 10m pellet trap in the basement every 6 months.
9QuHLBr.jpg
 
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Use it. It may be to soft for magnum velocities as it is but powder coating can solve that. I recently acquired about 150 lbs of what seems to be pure lead. So I tried powder coating to see if i could use it without the hassle of mixing alloys. I have used it in 45/70 and 357 magnum at top end velocities for the bullet weights as cast. No leading and no failures of the powder coating. Powder coating is relative easy to do and not costly to get started.
 
Shot works just fine.
Reclaimed shot may still have a few Steel pellets in it, but those float on the surface of the molten lead and you skim them off after fluxing along with the other crud,,graphite , nickel, copper coatings included.

When I did cast bullets, I was never much of a purist about it. I threw into the mix about everything available that was lead and was free at the time.
I was always able to make bullets. They shot well after lubing. I never pushed any of them to hyper-sonic velocity. So leading was never an issue.
Hardness of the casting alloy?,,,who knows..as long as it made bullets.
 
Mike-AK said:
Most lead shot is tumbled in graphite before packaging. I'm not sure what that would do to your casting metal? Perhaps it will flux out, but I don't know.
Click to expand...

It has to be skimmed before fluxing. Fluxing doesn't work well on that stuff. It doesn't hurt the final alloy mix, but its a job getting it all out.
 
Let us not forget that lead shot in good condition is selling for over $60 a bag. You have $200 worth of lead shot. If you can find ingot lead cheaper, it is worth selling lead shot on ebay. One can ship a 25 pound bag for $10 in a USPS Priority Mail small box.

Lead shot is roughly 5% antimony for standard shot and a little higher for Magnum shot. Cost for lead ingots today is about the same as the shot.
 
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I made a lot of bullets from lead shot. And bought reclaimed shot and made both bullets and new shot out of it. I still have a 1/2 ton of large lead shotthat was given to me. Chilled shot has approx 1/2 to 3% antimony in it for hardening. Mag shot is approx 4%(BBs) to 7 1/2 % for 7 1/2 and 8s depending on the maker
 
I stumbled on a deal for shot from an indoor turkey shoot. The owner’s grandson swept the (dirty, misshapen) #10 or #12 shot up off the concrete floor and sold it in plastic buckets 100# at a throw. Supposedly it was pretty soft lead, and I still have 100-200# out on the carport. LEAD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT! :D

Froggie
 
Yea, don’t think a shotgun loader would be interested in mixed size shot. Before somebody says sort it with screens, melt it for cast bullets. It will be fine for anything short of magnum loads. It’s true a little tin helps the flow and fill out of detail on your bullets. I would run test pour to see if you are getting good definition before worrying about tin. I’m not sure what is in shot.
It’s formed from dropping and I don’t know if any tin in process.
* if you are using Lee Bullet Molds designed for Tumble Lube I wouldn’t worry about tin content.
 
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