Attempted diy shot reclamation today.

The "ore": Approx. fifteen lb. of obvious surface deposits of shot picked with flat coal scuttle from local trap range, most of it at about 80 yrds. out on a dead line to station 3. This range has beeen scraped for reclamation in the past and the soil is sandy. Almost no overburden of leafmold, pine needles as the fine sandy soil appears uncongenial to weeds or grass and allows scouring by wind and water.

The apparatus: 5-gal. PVC bucket cut down to 6-inch depth; 1 1/2" hole in bottom; four legs 30" lgth attached to raise it above second PVC bucket. Shop vac, leaf blower.

The result: 1 lb. 13 oz. of shot mixed with light-colored quartz/quartzite roughly the same physical size as shot and apparently of sufficient wgt. to not be deflected or winnowed by air blast. Shot vac had insufficient volume and speed. Leaf blower had more than enuf speed and cfm and worked best on low speed as high speed deflected shot as well as debris outside the path of fall. Hole in upper bucket was too large; too high a volume of material thru air blast. Reduced with duct tape to get a smaller volume thru air blast.

If there's another attempt, I'll make a sloping chute with a 3-4" wide mouth above the catchbucket and use compresser blowgun with a wide mouth attachment plus an adjustable positioner (horizontal board on which I can move the blowgun) to get better control of airstream. There is too much silica (Moh's hardness 7) in the shot to make me comfortable with the barrel-scoring potential even in a petaled shot-cup. I'm now wondering if any other separation process is possible except for the old "This is a lentil and this ain't"? I doubt that seiving or screening is possible because of the close proximity of size and mass of the shot and the remaining particles of sand. Thought about panning with a greased pan but here again the difference in particle magnitude and mass is too small. Also possible that the relative irregularity of the quartz particles may mean that a "Greener" shot trowel with precisely the right size divots would tend to select shot over the rocky inclusions. I may have to stake out an invisible tarpaulin in the fall zone LOL! I'm not worried about roundness as application would be skeet. I'm also not worried about graphiting to get the stuff to flow thru a reloader as a dipper will work for small scale reloading. I am a bit worried about which set of barrels gets sacrificed to the experiment.

jack

Now thinking that the separation process may have to involve partitioning of the catch bucket with baffles such that a small difference in deflection path can be taken advantage of for sorting.

jack

Seems to me that some sort of small water sluice would separate the lead. Speed of water would probably have to be fairly fast.

Think small gold nuggets and mine them as in the Yukon around 1888!
Mike

The gold panning idea turned out better than I imagined. Thin coat of petroleum jelly or Crisco in a pie pan catches the lighter weight non-lead junk. Even badly deforned pellets do not stick. However, too large a quantity of shot sweeps the junk with it so it takes a while. So I've got about 2 lb of clean deformed shot. Building new and improved contraption this weekend.

jack

I once saw the process of removing diamonds from small pieces of rock at a diamond mine in South Africa. Wooden boards coated with grease over which water pushed the mix of rock bits and diamonds. You cannot wet diamonds and they stuck to the grease. the wet rock bits were flushed over and away. Maybe this might separate shot from silisca bits. If it was not -35oC outside I'd try it. FWIW
Mike

I have seen people remove the stones from reclaimed shot using a fan and 2 buckets turn on fan and pour shot from 1 bucket to the other bucket in front of the fan seems to work really well after they were satisfied with the shot they would pour in some powdered graphite and shake it around and it was good to go

That's exactly what I did (see original post) but still had some relatively heavy quartz/quartzite fragments remaining.

jack

I did see that just commenting on what I have seen people do
I have also seen people use a seive with holes drilled to about pellet size when they are picking up the shot I guess this would limit the bigger rocks but not the smaller pellet size
would a slopping chute with a slot cut into it work? my theory the shot pellet would roll and have enough inertia to jump the gap where as the stone might fall out? getting the slight width right might be trickie
even a step between chutes might work?

Brer Rabbit:

In my somewhat unillustrious past, I washed a lot of rocks in pursiut gold. The idea of greasing a pan is the exact opposite of the way we treated them- burned them in the breakfast fire to eliminate any grease contamination which would impede the flow of small debris over the lip. Try it clean; it may work better for you.

For a small sluice, pick up a length of 4" or 6" corrogated drain pipe (plastic) and cut it half to create a trough. The corrogations will serve as riffles and with the water flow adjusted properly, the debris will flow away, leaving the shot in the riffles. About 4' length should do it but experiment with length and water flow until desired results are being attained.

Have fun and when you become proficient, I'll meet you on the Middle Fork of the Boise.

Best, Cary

I believe you're correct about the water flow and riffle idea as it is currently patented for precisely the purpose of spent shot reclamation.

jack

You got to be kidding me! I stole that idea from a guy named Buzzard on a TV show about mining 25 yr's ago! Now some one's patented it? Buzzard's been dead for 15-20yr's so it couldn't be him. I feel so betrayed!

Good luck with this project. Sounds like you're doing alright with it.

Cary

Fooling with grease sounds like a tremendous mess. I guess it is OK if you just want a few pounds. I explained how the little shot harvesting group of guys I belong to obtains our shot in another post about this subject. When we do a shot harvesting run we can pick up 600 LBS or more in a few hours. First you have to have an area that is shot over alot so the shot is concentrated in a small area. Trees out at about 100 yds tend to stop the shot and it bounces off of them falling in thick areas. These areas can actually look like puddles of shot. I myself use a shop vac to pick it up. Others use diferent methods. Yes you do get alot of sand,stone and leaves. It is not a problem to seperate it. Initially on the field with some help from a partner,take the dirty shot in a 5 gallon bucket and slowly pour it into another 5 gallon bucket from a comfertable height. Take a leaf blower and blow the air stream thrue the cascaiding shot. This will remove most of the undesirable material. It takes some practice and experimentation to find the sweet spot that does the most good without blowing your shot on to the ground. Now you have relatively clean shot. Another method is to pour it down a screan (screan door screan with some support)and blow the light stuff off the top while the sand falls thrue. Now to remove any remaining sand or vegatation my buddy built a hopper that allows the shot to fall in a wide width and is adjustable so the shot comes out in a thin long stream. A 12volt fan from an auto radiator is mounted to blow air thrue the falling shot. 2 passes thrue this fan and the shot is now CLEAN. No it is not ready to load yet. Take this shot and tumble it in an cheap cement mixer like Harbour freight tools sells. This operation knocks off the oxide. You have to mount a blower to blow this oxide out of the mixer. When I build mine I will use a shop vac to suck the oxide out so it isn't going all over the place. Tumble some more with graghite and it is finished. It looks like new shot out of the bag except for the imperfections. I use this shot exclusively and it works good thrue the loader. No scratched barrels and it does break far targets. Best of all it's free except for time spent. But when I end up with a few hundred pounds it lasts a while. One tool I plan to build in the future will seperate the badley damaged pellets from the more rounded ones giving me better shot.

To reiterazatilise, I used the pneumatic winnowing approach right down to a duplication of the equipment which Tanky describes. Some small quartz fragments had sufficient mass to resist flying away. I certainly agree that the greased pan would not be efficient with a large quantity. I think next time the leaf blower for the light chaff and sand and Cary's hydro approach with the corrugated flexpipe for the stubborn remainder. Thanks, Tanky, for the description of tumbling apparatus and operation.

jack