Scrap tower

The shotgun tower in Berlin-Rummelsburg

A scrap tower is a tower that used to be used to make shotgun pellets for shotgun cartridges . Liquid lead was poured through a sieve at the top of the tower. In free fall , spherical drops formed due to the cohesive force and surface tension of the material. At a sufficient height of fall, the lead had already cooled and solidified when it was caught in a water basin below, in which the balls continued to cool.

Today scrap towers are mostly only preserved as industrial monuments (especially in the USA and Australia ) - but modern drop towers are still used for the manufacture of spheres from special materials .

Is known the Shot Tower of Lead Pipe & Shot Factory (ger .: Bleirohr- & grist mill ) in Melbourne , which was taken only in the 1960s out of service and was later incorporated as an historic attraction in the dome-covered courtyard of a large shopping center.

The shot ball tower in Berlin-Rummelsburg , built in 1908, is the landmark of the Victoriastadt neighborhood there .

Remains of the scrap tower at Federaun can be seen above and below on the rock face.

In Vienna - Favoriten , a scrap tower was built in 1825, which achieved the necessary drop height by combining a 25 m high wooden tower with a 35 m deep shaft below. In Carinthia and the Miessal there were scrap towers that were not built free-standing, but instead took advantage of natural falls to which they were built like bay windows .

List of received scrap towers

Fuggerau , Arnoldstein-Gailitz , Schrotturmstrasse 1, Carinthia, Simon Wallner's scrap factory from 1814, stone tower increased from 50 m to 56 m after 1880, operated until 1975; Museum (A)
Schrottenturm , (also: Schrotturm, Schrottenburg) from 1818/24, in operation until 1873, since 1938 in Klagenfurt (on the western edge) (previously in Krumpendorf am Wörthersee ), Carinthia, 67 m high, see list for details; fallow (as of September 2014) (A)
Scrap tower Federaun , Carinthia (A)
Scrap tower in the village of Barnkrug, on the Lower Elbe, Drochtersen municipality (D)
Ferry gate tower , Hann. Münden , today the Museum of Labor (D)
Zündhütle , Karlsruhe (D)
Scrap tower of the GC Dornheim weapons and ammunition factory , 1911/12, Magdeburg (D)
Schweinfurt , in the old commercial district (D)
Tangermünde , 47 m high (D)
In Finland today there is only one scrap tower (made of metal), which is located in Tampere (Pispala district). (SF)
Torre de los Perdigones in Seville

Scrap tower on the Fuggerau , Gailitz (A)
Scrap tower in the old commercial district in Schweinfurt (D)
Scrap tower , Klagenfurt-St. Martin (A)
Ferry gate tower, also called hail tower, Hann. Münden (D)
Phoenix Shot Tower in Maryland. It was the tallest structure in the United States until the Trinity Church (New York City) was built.
Scrap tower in Magdeburg

Web links

Commons : Junk Towers - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Reinhold Gasper, Friedrich Hans Ucik: The former scrap tower near the Hollenburg (Southern Carinthia) and the other scrap towers in Carinthia and Austria, which was previously unknown in the specialist literature . In: Carinthia II . 196/116 Vintage. Klagenfurt 2006, p. 85–91 ( PDF on ZOBODAT [accessed December 30, 2016]).
^ Preston Parish: Baltimore Shot Tower: Nomination Form . In: National Register of Historic Places database . National Park Service , October 1, 1969, accessed March 10, 2018 (English, 1.2 MB), p. 2.

[1] Reinhold Gasper, Friedrich Hans Ucik: The former scrap tower near the Hollenburg (Southern Carinthia) and the other scrap towers in Carinthia and Austria, which was previously unknown in the specialist literature . In: Carinthia II . 196/116 Vintage. Klagenfurt 2006, p. 85–91 ( PDF on ZOBODAT [accessed December 30, 2016]).

[2] Preston Parish: Baltimore Shot Tower: Nomination Form . In: National Register of Historic Places database . National Park Service , October 1, 1969, accessed March 10, 2018 (English, 1.2 MB), p. 2.