He doubled that, He put some castle-like trim on the top and called the design Gothic. He wanted his neighbors to like the addition, but the real action was inside his strange new home. He knocked holes through each of the floors inside and put a water tank at the bottom. At the top, he poured lead into a sieve. The lead formed into spheres as it fell six floors. By the time the drops hit the water below, they'd started to solidify. The water caught and cooled them the rest of the way.
Up to then, most shot was cast. That was very labor-intensive. Shot was also made by pouring lead into a sieve over a barrel. That really did give tear-shaped drops.
Before Watts, no one had yet realized that a much longer fall would give spheres. Watts saw how he might greatly cut the cost of making high-quality shot. Then he gambled his home that it would work. And it did. Shot towers like his sprouted all over England and Europe. Yet the process changed little.
Shot makers added an up flow of air, and they invented ways to sort out deformed shot. Yet Watts old patent still gave a pretty good description of 20th-century shot-making. In fact Watt's old house -- his original shot tower -- kept producing shot until Watt's invention teaches us the two essential elements of good invention. The first is perception. Watts gazed more closely at nature and saw what other people had missed.
The other element is simplicity. Others had labored to control the process with their own hands. Watts had the grace to stand aside and let nature do the work for him. The real beauty of this process is that, in the end, there is no human process at all. Early History in America. In , Thomas Jefferson had congress pass the Embargo Act of which forbade all international trade to and from American ports, and Jefferson hoped that Britain and France would be persuaded of the value and the rights of a neutral commerce.
This was the end of importing lead shot from England, France and the rest of Europe where shot towers produced tons of shot for American export. European shot towers had sprung up all over Europe after the construction of the first shot tower by William Watts in in Bristol, England and the American colonies were major buyers. With this turn of events Jefferson's embargo , shot towers began to be constructed in the colonies for American consumption.
Both these towers produced shot and bullets for the War of The tower produced tons of ammunition during the War of and the Civil War. Four generations of the Sparks family kept the tower in operation until The tower is now part of a city playground with a recreation center at the base.
It's a prime example of Philadelphia's reputation for superb brickwork. The operation was completely above ground while the Jackson Ferry Tower in Wytheville, built one year earlier, has much of it's drop underground. The combined drop above and below ground of the Jackson Ferry Tower is ' with the above ground rectangular tower standing 75 feet and the underground shaft another 75 feet. Later, Jefferson himself used the "Watts Method" of making shot by dropping molten lead from the top of the Natural Bridge into the stream below.
That small stream is Cedar Creek. Early shot towers where found in the New England states in the early 18th century and flourished in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, where they were used in the manufacture of lead shot for shotguns.
The owner, George Youle, was a dry goods merchant. This particular shot tower operated for years and was quite productive, selling much of its inventory to hardware and sporting goods dealers in New York and Pennsylvania.
In turn, the dealers supplied the Indian Bureau, the American Fur Trade and a number of suppliers in the south and west. Other famous shot towers include the Collier Shot Tower in St. When one considers the small size of shot and compares the size of the building and lofty tower devoted to its operation, the proportions are quite distorted. The apparatus for manufacturing shot was merely a plate of copper with a number of holes punched in it and placed a few hundred feet above a water source at the bottom of the tower.
The melted lead was poured, passing through the holes in the plate sieve and than falling into the water at the bottom of the tower. This process cooled, formed and hardened the liquid molten lead into perfect shot, all in one operation. This is known as the "Watts Method. It no longer stands. What's the future of American Shot Towers? The idea of a shot tower as a monument was never found to have the same attraction as those towers of light-houses or ones found at stone forts on the frontier, and many of them were torn down.
However, in recent years, the towers in Baltimore Phoenix and Virginia Jackson Ferry have become great tourist attractions. The Sparks tower in Philadelphia has been preserved and is in wonderful condition. Probably the most beautiful tower, it's days are numbered. Tragically, the Watts Tower first in the world in UK was destroyed in the s. The Jackson Ferry Shot Tower was typical of others in the country that made small spherical lead shot for the fowling pieces of frontier settlers.
Smelted lead from the nearby Austinville mines was melted at the top of the tower and poured through a sizing sieve to produce small droplets. Surface tension caused the molted lead to assume a spherical shape that solidified during its foot fall. The shot was then collected in a water-filled kettle at the bottom of the shaft. This gives it a more spread-out shot pattern than other materials but still delivers a great deal of energy.
There is some evidence that because steel pellets do not deform -- they maintain their round shape throughout their flight -- they wound animals without killing them more often than lead. Until the early s, most shot was made of lead. As environmentalists studied its effect on the ecosphere, they found that the spent lead shot hunters left in waterways and forests had harmful effects on wildlife and risked contamination of drinking water.
Lead shot has been banned from waterfowl hunting in the United States since , and various types of steel and alloy shot have taken its place. The rule of thumb for shot size is the higher the number, the smaller the diameter of the shot. There is a consistent standard in the United States, but worldwide the numbers don't correspond to any specific measurement across the board. At Chuck Hawks' Shot Pellet Information and Recommendations , you'll find a guide to the various sizes in the United States and what they are used for.
In hunting, smaller ammo is used for smaller game, and larger ammo is used for larger game. Buckshot is large-sized shot that got its name because it is used to hunt deer. You must be logged in to post a comment. Facebook-f Linkedin Twitter. October 15, Jon Anderton. Legend has it that lead falling into a puddle from the burning roof of a church prompted a eureka moment for William Watts, who designed the first Shot Tower.
Shot Towers use surface tension and gravity to create perfectly spherical lead shot. Shot Towers replaced the highly inefficient, expensive, dangerous and time-consuming use of moulds to create lead shot prior to The height of a Shot Tower is perfectly calibrated with the size of shot required.
The Melbourne Central shot tower and iconic glass cone. Image courtesy of Canley from Wikimedia Commons History is littered with innovative ideas and processes which we often take for granted today but were groundbreaking in their day.
History of the Shot Tower The original Shot Tower was created by William Watts of Bristol even though there are others around the world who unfairly claimed his idea. Share on email Email. Share on facebook Facebook. Share on twitter Twitter. Share on pinterest Pinterest. Share on linkedin LinkedIn. Leave a Comment Cancel Reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Join our Newsletter. Email Address. Recent Posts.
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