How Is Steel Bird Shot Made?
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Making Steel Wire
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Bird shot starts as a long, steel alloy wire. To create this wire, molten iron is mixed with carbon and other metals before being poured into small, narrow troughs. Once cooled, the molten mixture hardens to form a solid alloy bar known as a "billet." The billet is then fed through a series of powerful rollers that squeeze the metal into long, thin strips. These rollers are angled in tandem in such a way that the strips gradually fold onto themselves, eventually forming wire strands. To adjust the diameter or "gauge" of each strand, the wire goes through a process known as "drawing." Here, one end is cut and fit through a specially shaped opening called a "die." A machine then slowly pulls the rest of the wire through the die, squeezing it into the proper diameter across its entire length. Finally, the gauged steel wire is wound up and sold to the shot manufacturers.
Stamping the Shot
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At the shot manufacturing plant, the wire roll is loaded into a machine whose rollers straighten the strands. This straightening process allows the wire to feed into the stamping press with greater ease. Every time a millimeter of wire enters the stamping machine, two hemispherical, concave molds press together to sever the small wire tip and force it into a tiny sphere shape. Even though the wire is a steel alloy, it is still malleable enough to be deformed by these powerful, hydraulic shaping presses.
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Grinding Away the Flash
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As a side effect of the stamping process, the newly formed bird shot bearings each have a raised ring of metal around their equators (also called "the flash"). To grind down its flash, the shot is loaded between two closely placed, treated steel disks. The bottom disk rotates continuously and has a grooved surface with a rough, file-like texture between each groove. Meanwhile, the top disk has small, shot-sized holes throughout and remains stationary. As the shot rolls with the bottom disk, the former's flash gets "caught" in the groove where the rough trenches grind away at it.
Once enough of the flash has been ground, the shot will pop up through the upper holes. These escaped shot pellets are then put through similar dual-disk assemblies with smaller holes and more shallow grooves until the desired flash-free surface is attained. The smooth, steel pellets are then shipped to ammunition manufacturers for the creation of shotgun shells.
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