Lead Shot
Lead Shot consists of small balls of lead of varying sizes, depending on the application.
The main use today is as a projectile in shot guns, though there are several other applications as mentioned below. Originally, lead shot was used in muskets and early rifles.
To control the hardness of shot used in shotgun shells, varying amounts of antimony are added to the lead shot, forming lead alloys.
Lead shot can also be Nickel plated to increase penetration of the shot into the target and to improve pattern density. Nickel plating provides a harder non porous shell that decreases pellet deformation.
History of Manufacture of Lead shot
Lead shot was first manufactured using wooden molds, but this is too expensive a process. Later lead shot was manufactured using shot towers.
In a shot tower, molten lead is dropped through a sieve high up in the tower. The liquid lead solidifies as it falls forming lead balls due to surface tension and cools as it drops into a water reservoir at the bottom of the shot tower.
Today smaller shot sizes are made using the Bliemeister method, which involves dropping measured amount of molten lead into warm water and rolling it along an incline followed by another drop.
Larger sizes are made by the cold swaging process of feeding calibrated lengths of wire into hemispherical dies and stamping them into spheres
Lead shot sizes
Larger lead shot comes in three sizes: B, BB, and BBB. Smaller lead shot is available in sizes 7½, 8, and 9, with applications ranging from sporting clays and skeet shooting, to non-waterfowl hunting at progressively shorter distances. The larger bird shot sizes (i.e., 6, 5, 4) are mostly used in turkey and pheasant hunting applications where legal.
Buckshot
Buckshot is simply lead shot formed to larger diameters. Sizes range in ascending order from size B to Tri-Ball.
Other Applications for Lead Shot
Lead Ballast – Small sizes of Lead shot are often used as ballast, small shot can be poured more like a liquid and does not have to be completely round. Specific uses include stress testing equipment that need a variable weight to test the fracture stress of the item under test and hydrometers where the weight is made of shot, since the lead weight has to be poured into a narrow glass vessel.
Lead shot is also used as ballast in dead blow hammers, scuba weight belts and speaker stands.
Split lead shot – larger size lead shot that is cut part way through, is used in fly fishing. The split shot is crimped over the fishing line to add a measured amount of weight.
Cooling Systems – Due to its relatively high heat capacity and low thermal conductivity at low temperatures, lead shot has been used as a suitable material for a regenerator in cooling systems.
Nuclead carries a full line of lead shot available to ship.
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