TMOP - Chapter 10 - The Shot Tower

[Richard Ryan]

Fascinating!  And what an evocation image the production of the shot makes - metal rain or tears, a hail of falling shrapnel... very "Gravity's Rainbow".....


--- On Fri, 10/24/08, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:


.A "shot tower" is a tower designed for the production of shot balls
by freefall of molten lead, which is then caught in a water basin. The
shot is used for projectiles in firearms.

In a shot tower, lead is heated until molten, then dropped through a
copper sieve high up in the tower. The liquid lead solidifies as it
falls and by surface tension forms tiny spherical balls. The partially
cooled balls are caught at the floor of the tower in a water-filled
basin.[1] The now fully cooled balls are checked for roundness and
sorted by size; those that are "out of round" are remelted. A
slightly
inclined table is used for checking roundness.[2] To make larger shot
sizes, a copper sieve with larger holes is used. However, the maximum
size is limited by the height of the tower, because larger shot sizes
must fall farther to cool. A polishing with a slight amount of
graphite is necessary for lubrication and to prevent oxidation.
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