Newbie Needing help with smelting!


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Thread: Needing help with smelting!

  1. #1
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    Default Needing help with smelting!

    Greetings from the Gulf!

    I've been interested in smelting and such for a few months now, and I've finally decided to go ahead with it. I'm going to practice and become good at smelting before I move further into metal working. I figured I'd start just by making ingots.

    I've been collecting a lot of scrap metal for the past few months, so I've got a bunch of aluminum, a little brass, and a mountain of copper.
    In fact, I've got enough copper that I'm going to need to smelt that first just to make more room for everything. Not that I have a ton - it's just the copper I have takes up a lot of space (rather than weight).

    I've been doing some research, but I haven't really been able to find a good guide for newbies. I mean... what equipment do I need? Where can I find it the cheapest? How do I learn how to use the stuff? How much is fuel, and how long does it last? etc, etc.

    I'm not looking to have someone hold my hand and walk me through it all, but I can't seem to find any good reading material on this stuff, and it's driving me nuts!

    Thanks for any advice!

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  2. #2
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    I don't think what you're doing is really smelting, which is producing metal from metallic ores. It sounds like what you want to do is remelting. Unfortunately, copper isn't easy to melt in its pure form; it takes a lot of heat (2000F+) to do that, more than most home-made furnaces can achieve. And casting it doesn't work too well either. I'd suggest you mix some tin into it (about 10% by weight), which would bring down the melting point and give you bronze ingots, which are more useful for casting.

    If you don't know how to do this stuff, I'd strongly advise you to find someone who does, and have them show you, in person, what you need to know. There's a lot more to this than an email message or even a Youtube video will teach you, and what you don't know can kill you, when molten metal's involved.

    Andrew Werby
    United Artworks- Sculpture, Jewelry, Furniture,and other Art Objects, plus Art Resources, Techniques of Sculpture, Jewelry and Lapidary, an Online Bookstore, and a Custom Art Referral Network



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    Yeah, I talked to a buddy of mine that I'd forgotten works at Valmont up in Nebraska. I'm just going to hold off until I can get up there to visit friends and family, and I'll have him show me all that. No sense in rushing into it and screwing something (or myself) up.



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    heyimjason where abouts on the gulf are you located?



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    Quote Originally Posted by slowlearner View Post
    heyimjason where abouts on the gulf are you located?
    Gulfport, MS



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Needing help with smelting!

Needing help with smelting!