[Jim Porter]

My shot is mushroom shaped. I use a Better Shot Maker. I started with crop oil last year and have changed to antifreeze because the oil was too hard to get off. I have a 12 gal reservoir and a recirc system. The fluid circulates in front of a fan and radiator and is a constant 100deg. The maker is level and the shot drops about 1/4". I added one quart of Sun detergent as was suggested here. I use wheel weights and they are clean and have been fluxed. All the drippers seem to work well when the pot is up to temp. My catch can is 13" deep.

My shot looks like a small atomic bomb cloud. No "popcorn", its smooth but not round. What am I doing wrong?

 

[cotrshooter]

i use the cheapest laundry detergent i can get. Have never had a problem

 

[DecalDude]

I am useing about 50/50 anti freeze mix looks fine and we havent had a day over 35degrees that I have made it on cant wait for warmer weather. I run bout 30 pounds before I get too cold. Plan on running 75pound in the morning.

Jerry Lewis

 

[shot410ga]

Sometimes I get a lot of oblong shot. What causes that? I use anti freeze with some dish soap for coolant. Popcorn type shot is caused by having the coolant to cool. I heat it up with a bucket heater.

 

[GoldEx]

You're going to get a lot of different answers here. I have found that as long as I keep my coolant (Which is hydraulic oil) above 120 and below 150, the viscocity remains fairly constant. I have never had mushroomed shot. Lots of other weird stuff but no mushrooms. Football, flat, teardrop and dimpled.

If you think about a football shape, and think about what the shot drop is doing before it hits the coolant, it's rolling down the lip ramp of the ladle. If it falls off the end and hits the coolant immediately before it has time to reform into a round ball after losing contact with the ramp, you get a football. The distance is critical and so is temp and viscocity. They all go hand in hand. In any manufacturing process, you want consistency. You need to keep temps in a cetain range both lead and coolant. The viscocity of your coolant must not change half way through your session.

Jeff

 

[sub sr.]

with the littleton i was getting the same results --until i raised the coolant until the shot only had an eight of an inch before entering the liquid

 

[b12]

The angle of your ramp has a lot to do with the odlong of the shot also. Just a couple of degrees one way or the other can affect the shape greatly.

 

[Jim Porter]

Yes I did talk to Mr Stewart. After I told him all the details of the setup, he decided that my mix was too soft. This is a batch from a friend that went through a house fire at a really high temp. It actually ran out of his shop into a gravel parking space. No telling what the temp was. I cleaned everything up and ran a batch that I know to be wheel weights and it ran perfectly. Best shot I have made to date, and I ran about a ton last year. He suggested that I mix about 60% wheel weights whth the bad batch and see if it would harden up enough to run. I will. Problem is there is 1400# of the bad stuff.
For what it's worth, coolant temp made absoultely no difference. It started at 50 deg and went to a constant 105 deg and the shot never varied.
Thanks
Jim

 

[Jim101]

Interesting, I've never tried to run pure lead. Just one more thing to consider when things go wrong. Thanks for the update.





Jim

 

[plinker611]

i run a 4.5 lb ingot of hard lead(pure sorted clip on w.w.) and back it up with a 1.75 lb of soft(last 500 lb run was virgin lead ingots as backups),black max never notices.i do pre heat my ingots on my wood burner to 160-200 degrees before putting in ladel,mark