Our Aussie posters and one down in Texas gave us a fair amount of information about making Bismuth shot last year or the year before. I tried to make some in #5 shot size as this was my personal favorite in lead for many years. I had very mixed results, but did get some decent shot out of the attempt. Maybe 20% was what I wanted and the rest needed more work, if you know what I mean. With more experience it should be possible to produce enough decent shot to supply all one persons needs fairly easily. After all what are we trying to make 25-50 pound a year?
I started out with a Littleton shotmaker that I bought used.
I had trouble getting the right temperature, the nozzle hole needed to be altered, my first attempt to use anti freeze was not a good one. Others use diesel or even soap I understand. I tried several different combos of Bismuth and Tin. Pure Bismuth was fairly brittle. Tin made it more workable. It is all trial and error type stuff. Not rocket science or brain surgery. If several groups tried to make it and shared information then it would be a cake walk.
My "failures" were often a teardrop shape or just several different sizes of pellets. Just to see how they would pattern I loaded a few shells with the teardrop shot and patterned them. They patterned well and I suspect that the duck would never have know they were rejected pellets. I was afraid to load them in a progressive loader because they could bridge in the tube and not load properly.
I have only one real problem with the Bismuth patent. How or why on Earth did they get a patent for a process that is not that unique or even original? I suspect it was just a case of a patent office worker with no concept of the application that was before them and they just granted it.
