Are you serious?

 

Why not? I don't intend on making a living of it, but if a guy could even collect a five gallon bucket or two it would save alot of money at nearly $40 dollars a bag. By the way, I have a good friend who has a great set up for melting down and making great shot, so I wouldn't be trying to clean it and throw it straight into the reloader.

 

Do you really realize how much soil you would likely have to sift to get even a 5 gallon bucket? I could be wrong but sounds like a needle in a haystack sort of thing.

 

Your probably right, but with the prices going the way they are, I thought maybe someone had come up with a decent way of doin this, you have to admit there are some pretty creative inventions posted on here. ya never know.

 

Hey prove me wrong, it's been done many times before.

 

I did 2 test sample digs at our range.. right in the middle where the broken clays were.. took out my folding knife, cut a plug out of the ground the size of a grapefruit and carried it back home.. after a little soaking in a bucket of water I had my shot.. way more than I figured...probably 1/2 ounce worth.. if they would let you use a garden tiller I would say till it a couple inches deep and shovel it into your pickups bed and head to the house.. I'm all for you!!

 

A fellow at our club just went and dug 2 small ice cream buckets of dirt in the shot area of the bank. His reward 11# of shot. He has built himself a screen and blower/vacumn system out of spare parts at home and said the process took him about an hour. Come spring he's going to at it and see how much shot has acumulated over 2 traps in 56 years

 

I would think you would need to be way past where the broken clays are. The main shotfall zone should be many many yards farther than the clays travel.

 

I agree on the shotfall zone.. the reason I dug where the broken clays were is because it was mowed and the rest of the field was waist high with weeds..

 

What little research I have done on a reclaiming companies site, says to pull test samples 487 feet from the shooter. If I remember correctly they said a 2' by 2' by 2" deep sample. I have paced this off and scractched around a little, but thought it would be nearly impossible to obtain much by hand, which is why I started this post for ideas. Our shooting grounds are flat as a board so I guess maybe this is a slight advantage. Thanks again for any suggestions. Bret

 

Brett, I've reclaimed some shot from our two fields. Walk out and you can see where the drop zone is. I skimmed 5-5gallon buckets of dirt and shot off the top two inches of soil. I then tumbled them in a small cement mixer with water to separate the dirt and grass. The shot stayed at the bottom.

It could have been graphited and shot at singles the way it came out of the mixer. Since I make my own shot I ran it through my shotmaker. I got 85 pounds of nice shot.

Ajax

 

I just delt with this with a reclaimer. The main shot fall zone is suposedly at 200yrds due to angles and trajectory. If your club is been round along time and heavily shot you can scoop it up easily.

Our club before the initial mining, you could scoop up a 5 gal bucket in no time. Even now it lays out on top the mud.

Jerry Lewis

 

Myself and another guy got 10 5 gal. buckets 1/2 filled in about 4 hours work just doing surface reclaiming. Look in the area around 100 yards from the trap house on the ground. The shot will pool up in small piles, especially where there are small ruts. We used the back side of iron garden rakes to gather piles up that can be 5 lb. or more. You will also be picking up loose dirt along with small stones. Each one of those 1/2 filled buckets weights about 150lb. that's about max if you don't want to break the handle off. I made a sieve that fits over a wheel barrel with 1/8th. square screening to get most of the little rocks,grass,sticks out, then I empty the screenings into another bucket. I ran it twice through a stream of air from a gas leaf blower to get rid if the fine stones and powdered dirt. Next I washed the cleaned shot in water then set it out to dry. Finally I tumbled it in a shell case tumbler, about 25lb. at a time with 2 tea spoons of ATF fluid for 15 min. and it's done. I have microfine graphite, but I don't need it as it flows good in my MEC and never a bridge.

 

Awesome. At least I now know I'm not completely crazy for thinking about trying this. Unfortunately I'll have to wait for spring for warmer weather to give it a try but at least I'll have some ideas to work with, thanks to all for your replies and hope to see many more with your experiences with this. Bret

 

Well i take back my negative comments. I'm not scared to admit i was wrong. I would have thought it a much more involved process. Looks like you got plenty of starting points from these guys. Good luck with it.

Matt

 

It's a lot easier by us. Wait till the lake freezes and go out with a broom.

HM

 

No offense takin Matt, I'll have to admit as well, even I thought I was crazy for ever mentioning this idea. I figured I would get more "do you wear a padded helmet and ride the short bus" comments than I would helpful ones.LOL. Goes to show I guess, that there are a few good ones left out there.

 

Old LVGC had a machine for sale that should do the trick, contact Steve.

 

One five gallon pail of dirt/leaves, etc. resulted in 15 lb. of shot. Pretty poor shape, so I melted it down and made bullets. I just let a garden hose run in the bucket for about an hour. Lots of stirring and messing around and the shot was left.

We shoot into the side of a mountain (well, large hill to some folks). All rocks, little dirt/leaves at the bottom. Seems like it should be pooling in those rocks somewhere, but haven't found it yet.

cap

 

The first thing to do is to take walk through the trap fields at your club. Look for "sweet spots" places where the lead shot has collected on top of the ground. If you are lucky you will find a number of places where the lead has collected. It will resemble a carpet, possibly an inch thick, and fairly clean. These are the places you want to harvest.

I like to use a spackle bucket, flat shovel or dust pan, and an auto windshield ice scraper and brush to gather the lead. Scrape it up and pour it through a coarse screen into the bucket. When the top of the screen gets dirty, just brush it off and continue collecting. Keep checking the bucket to make sure you can lift it, it gets heavy fast.

When I get home I use a fine screen to get rid of the sand and a vacuum for the final cleaning. HMB

 

you should be able to see the shot on the ground, we just cut the sod up on a plot 3' x 3' and got about 100 lbs.



tony

 

If your club throws lots of targets plenty shot will be on top of the ground. If the ground is not level rain will wash the shot into clusters. This is what hmb is describing. This is the shot I would be after and not the nasty stuff in the ground.

 

I have a different problem from those posted here. We shoot into a woods about 80 yds from trap house. The trees no longer have tops for at least 20 ft into the woods. Leaves are at least 6 inches thick, so all the shot is not on top, nor is all of it on the bottom, it is intermixed at different levels in the leaves. Also, where in the woods would I look for an accumulation of shot. I went over one day during the summer and got one 5 gal. bucket but didn't get enough shot to encourage me to go back. Herb Roach

 

Dyson vacuum cleaner. lol

 

I don't know of a way to do this that won't make you feel like you have put in a hard days work but here the best I have come up with .... I found the sweet spot of the drop zone visually, it was obvious as there was a lot of shot just sitting on the surface. I then just swept up some of this top material using a stiff straw broom and a shovel. At this point I had about 50% shot mixed with sand and small rocks and some sticks. About 1/2 of a five gallon bucket was about all I wanted to lift. It took about an hour to get 10 of these 1/2 filled buckets. Next, the dirt/shot mix was dumped into a wheel barrow and filled this water about 2" obove the solids and the wheelbarrow was agitated back and forth like a slice box. This motion separated the high density lead from the sand/dirt/junk. The low density material is then removed from the wheel barrow and the washing is repeated until you are satified the shot is about as clean as you are going to get it. Then I scoop up about 10 pounds of shot in a 12 Mesh sieve and give it a final wash with a spray hose. The clean shot is then dried in the sun and finally graphited in a case polisher.

Next yeild was about 300 pounds of moderate quality shot for a pretty hard day's work. I do better at my regular job.