Shot tower

The shot is primarily used for projectiles in shotguns, and for ballast, radiation shielding, and other applications for which small lead balls are useful.

The liquid lead forms tiny spherical balls by surface tension, and solidifies as it falls.

[3] Polishing with a small amount of graphite is necessary for lubrication and to prevent oxidation.The process was invented by William Watts of Bristol, England, and patented in 1782.

[6] The "wind tower" method, which used a blast of cold air to dramatically shorten the drop necessary and was patented in 1848 by the T.O LeRoy Company of New York City,[7][8] meant that tall shot towers became unnecessary, but many were still constructed into the late 1880s, and two surviving examples date from 1916 and 1969.

Since the 1960s the Bliemeister method has been used to make smaller shot sizes, and larger sizes are made by the cold swaging process of feeding calibrated lengths of wire into hemispherical dies and stamping them into spheres.