Shifts and expedients of camp life, travel & exploration

by William Barry Lord; Thomas Baines

Shot, to make.

The manufacture of shot by the amateur, although not quite as easy of accomplishment as the preparation of slugs, may be, with the exercise of a little ingenuity, successfully carried out; and although the produce of his labours will not equal the perfect spheres produced by the professional shot manufacturer, by the aid of his costly tower, yet it will be good enough for the description of shooting he will be likely to obtain in situations where the making of shot is rendered necessary. We were driven to the necessity of devising the plan we are about to describe by the impossibility of obtaining shot, coupled with the urgent want of that to be procured with it. Thus is the operation to be conducted:—A piece of iron, such as horse-shoes are made from, is to be obtained if possible, if not, any other piece of iron, about 2ft. long and of moderate width and thickness, will answer the purpose. About an inch from the end of this drill a wide-mouthed, funnel-shaped hole, of the form known as a countersink, until within about the eighth of an inch of going through the bar; then, with a drill about the size of a knitting-needle, extend the hole quite through; next, get a piece of dry plank, about 3ft. long, and in it, with a handsaw, cut as many longitudinal cuts as the width of the board will admit of, making them a little over the eighth of an inch deep and the thickness of the saw wide. The board, when placed slightly on the incline, must be so treated with a charge of molten lead that all the cuts are filled with it from the upper end; the result will be the formation of a great number of long lead wires. These are to be taken from the grooves and fresh batches run, until as many pounds have been made as it is intended to make shot. A preserved-meat tin, or an ordinary tin pot, must now be about one-third filled with water, and the remaining two-thirds filled up with oil; the pot must be placed on a plate or dish, in order to catch any oil which may run over as the work proceeds. The end of the iron bar which has the hole in it is now to be placed in the fire and heated to a bright-red heat: when the other end, round which a piece of cloth may be bound, is grasped with the left hand, and the bar quickly withdrawn from the fire, struck smartly against some solid body, in order to remove adhering dust and ashes, and then held with the wide mouth of the hole upward, a short distance above the surface of the oil in the pot. A lead wire is now to be quickly taken up in the right hand and its end pressed well down into the hole (as shown in the above illustration); if the iron is well heated, the wire will melt away very rapidly and run in a succession of drops into the oil: wire after wire is to be thus melted, until the iron requires reheating. (It is a good plan to have two or more irons at work, but it is not essential.) This wire-melting process must be continued until all the stock has been expended, when the solid contents of the pot may be taken out. If the operation of dropping has been properly performed the result will be shot of about three sizes—No. 7, No. 4, and duck shot. Certain conditional circumstances somewhat alter these sizes, but approximately they are to be expected, and a certain number more or less tailed will generally be found amongst the rest. To separate the three sizes of round shot two flat tin boxes or empty sardine tins are required. With a piece of nail filed down, so as to make a hole the size to just let No. 7 shot through, punch a number of holes in the bottom of one of the boxes, so as to make a sort of sieve of it; then with another nail make holes in the bottom of the second box, just large enough to let your No. 4 through. When these are prepared, wash your mixed shot in water, with wood ashes in it; this removes all the oil in the form of soap. The shot, when dry, is ready for sifting with the boxes. The first box lets only No. 7 or a size or so smaller through, keeping back the No. 4. The second box lets the No. 4 through, retaining the duck shot. Each size may now have its own respective tailers, or pear-shaped shot, mixed with it; these can be got rid of by allowing the shot to run down over a sloping board, when the round shot run straight to the bottom, whilst the tailers run off at the sides, and can be collected to melt up again.

Lead plates, to make.

Plates of lead for writing inscriptions on can be cast by turning up the edges of a piece of sheet copper, iron, or tin, just high enough to form a sort of shallow tray to hold the molten lead. In the absence of sheet metal, the surface of a box of sand, or a flat stone with a little wall of clay round it, may be made use of.

Lead pencils and stock whip handles.

Lead pencils, for rough carpenter’s work, can be made by filling joints of small cane, marsh reeds, or weed stalks, with melted lead, and then pointing them with a knife. The handles of stock whips and some other implements are weighted, and prevented from splitting, by having lead run into them; some of the former are occasionally very elaborately ornamented. The operation is performed by first cutting out the intended pattern on the handle with a sharp-pointed knife or other instrument, taking care that the cutting penetrates the wood deeply, that the form of the groove is slightly undercut, and that each ring of the pattern communicates with the one below it. The first ring on the stick must have an inlet made in it; strips of stout brown paper are now, after being slightly moistened and touched over with paste, rolled round the stick, layer after layer in spiral form, until its whole length has been thickly covered like the case of a rocket. When thoroughly dry the lead is run in at the inlet, and when cold the paper can be stripped off, and the handle finished off and polished with sand-paper or a bit of fish-skin.

Bruised gun-barrels, to repair.

Indentations in the sides of gun or rifle barrels can be taken out by the following process:—Take the barrel out of the stock; cut a cork so as to fit the muzzle tightly, and then force it down three inches, ram in about a quarter of an inch of dry powdered clay on the cork, twist a cloth dipped in cold water several times round the barrel in order to prevent the rib from becoming unsoldered by heat, and then fill up the space above the clay with molten hardened lead. (See “To harden bullets,” p. 228.) You will then have a metal plug exactly fitting the barrel. Remove the cork and clay, and fashion from strong hardwood a rod just long enough to reach a few inches beyond the indentation. A bar of iron is now to be heated to a red heat, and placed against the indented spot on the outside of the barrel; the wet cloth being at the same time wound above and below it. The metal plug is now to be forced down the tube with the rod until it rests on the obstruction, when a few blows with a piece of heavy wood on the upper end of the rod will generally pass the plug onwards by forcing the tube back to its proper position. It will be well to reverse ends with the plug and force it up and down several times, until it travels quite freely past the point of obstruction.