doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Small-scale trials of shot reclamation

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