Smelting, Melting, Foundry, and Casting

Hi all, figured I'd make my first post something useful rather than a question. I know more about casting than blacksmithing, so I figured I’d help add to the casting section a little by providing a general overview of how to get started in casting, reference books, equipment needed, safety precautions, etc. Hopefully this will be something that can be referenced to give some direction to the people asking "how do I start casting metal" or "can I cast my own anvil", etc, since there seem to be a fair number of those posts. I just did a bronze pour and ended up repeatedly explaining the process to all of my neighbors in the building where I live and work, so all of this be…

Melting points of Metals and Alloys 1958

Hi everybody, I'm becoming increasingly more interested in attempting to smelt some iron. I have a lot of learning to do, but I think I have a pretty good handle on the general process. I need to build a furnace, get it hot, then spend an entire day with a few friends loading buckets of ore and charcoal into it, then I have to get the bloom out of the furnace and compress it a little bit on a stump with a big wood mallet. Seems like something I could pull off, but I want to know more of the details before I get started. Any advice and any reading material you can recommend is appreciated. There are lots of good iron ore sources around me. I have some hematite. I also have…

Has anyone here tried making crucible steel in a propane forge? I’ve seen many videos of using coal set ups and even one guy on YouTube (shake the earth, his videos are cool) using a microwave casting set up. I’m making my forge to be able to take the heat and will try it anyway but if anyone else has I’d like to hear their side of it. Thanks

Okay so basically I have some pure tin and copper wire. I want to make a flower out of them (illustrated in the picture and low-effort MS paint drawings below). The copper wire is flattened to look more like pedals Copper wire is half buried into the mould material, preventing tin from fully covering/surrounding it. The end result will hopefully look something like this. Basically just a disc with copper wire sticking out. Does anyone know if this is possible or not? How well does molten tin seep into possible small gaps between the copper wire and mould material? What I fear, is that the copper wire will either get tinned, or not …

Since I was out in the shop trying to take some photos of my burner I figured why not show you what else I'm doing. Currently working on another run of my silver cell. Impure silver goes in the top and pure silver forms in the bottom. Electrolytic refining is the only way to make .9999 fine silver.

I live in the Catoctin mountains in Maryland, which was historically a very big charcoal and iron producing region. hiking behind my house, I found this rock. To my knowledge there was no iron production on my property, but this piece of “rock” looks suspiciously like slag, which leads me to think iron used to be produced very near where my blacksmith shop is currently.

This stuff is awesome. I cast a couple of 1/2 oz gold bars today with my delft clay today. I normally cast gold ingots in an open graphite mold. I have never been able to pour anything less than an ounce at a time. The deft clay eliminated the need for either melting the exact amount or trying to stop without over filling the mold.

It has been a long time since I posted last, but here goes. I am starting a new project and I am looking for someone in the Pittsburgh area who casts metal on a regular basis. It is not going to be a large pour only about 250 grams. What makes it interesting is because I want to do a water casting using a 200 grams of copper and 50 grams of fine silver mixture to create a mixture called Shibuichi. I can get the materials I just do not have the facilities to do it so I am hoping to find someone willing to help out. Please let me know below by responding. Thanks.

So, I've never done metal casting before but I've been experimenting to try and make something small like a ring for christmas for my mom. I bought a blow torch from lowes, a graphite something or other crucible from amazon along with pure aluminum, tongs, a mold frame, molding sand, and parting dust. Unfortunately, it is not going well. I was able to melt down pennies in a spoon before I got the crucible, but the crucible isnt working right. It wasn't heating up at all no matter how long I held the torch to them. I looked online and found that apparently when you buy crucibles online, they just.. don't finish making them I guess? Apparently you have to cure the…

Does anyone have experience or understand the principles of using crushed glass as flux? I was browsing the forum when I came across an old post about using crushed brown beer bottles as flux for copper and bronze casting. This is the second or third time I have heard of using crushed bottles for flux. They both emphasized how important the color of the bottles were I understand the basic principle of using glass as flux. It melts at a lower temp than your metal and creates a physical barrier keeping oxygen off of your metal. They said two completely different color of bottles to use. One guy said "he uses brown beer bottles and that the iro…

Hi everyone, I have about 25lbs of coarse magnetite I was hoping to smelt in a bloomery furnace. Do you suggest crushing the material to a more consisten powder or can I run it through the furnace like this? I appreciate any the suggestions

I finally got around to buying some delft clay. You can get some really nice detail with very minimal finishing. I only filed off the parting line. Nothing else. I didn't know what to cast so I walked outside and found the oaks are producing so I pulled off one acorn and rammed it up. In less than an hour It went from an acorn on a branch to a pewter replica.

Hi group, so we’ve been in the copper business for many years and one new product we’re going to be adding is copper bars. We have access to an unlimited supply of copper and are searching for a smelter to create the copper bars. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you

So i am fairly new to bronze casting. I have dabbled some, but never really made a go of it until now. I have gotten in to my head to make a valsgärde helmet. In order to do this i need to make a few bronze plaques. It is a very, very long story. I made my fist pour today and the result was not satisfactory. I would truly appreciate some more experienced casters insights to what i need in order to reach success. I have used an investment powder, ses silk, made the mold. I did not have th proper chance to prevent the mold. I suspect that maybe than can be a problem. I do not have access to a vacuum set up. Which otherwise would be ideal... But if you can …

Howdy everyone I was curious if anyone had any recommendations for a foundry to cast new cast iron parts to replace broken ones im working on a couple of antique farm machines and there’s a few cast iron parts that I need to replace I have the parts so I’m assuming they just take the old part and make a mold to pour it in using the old parts I googled and found places all over the country that offer that service but i wanted to ask here and see if anyone had a recommendation for working with a foundry on one off castings

Not verified yet but a new discovery in the Tigris river valley puts not only cold worked copper but copper smelting time line back another 3,000 years. Pretty fascinating find. https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/03/a-discovery-changes-the-origin-of-metallurgy-the-last-hunter-gatherers-of-anatolia-were-already-working-copper-more-than-9000-years-ago/

Hi All, I am new here but I wanted to share my 3 year long project to create a functioning arc furnace capable of melting pretty much any metal using simply the electricity from a common outlet. That was the goal anyway... After 3 years, I determined that, while a common 120V household outlet would likely melt steel in small quantities (less than 5 oz.) it wouldn't be efficient for anything larger. The project was inspired by a similar project produced by Gregory Hildstrom, you can simply google Hildstrom carbon arc furnace if you are interested in seeing his project. Anyway, his ran on a very expensive lincoln 275amp welder. My goal was to produce something si…

I was trying to mix brass and aluminum. And when I poured the mixture out it came out very brittle. What did I do wrong?

I am looking for someone I could send small batches of copper bearing ore to for smelting and a quote of what something like this would cost. When I say small batches I mean approximately 50 lbs batches. The copper would be used for making jewelry as a hobby. I have a mine that is willing to give me small batches of the copper ore if I can find someone to smelt it. More details can be provided. Any leads are appreciated.

i was wondering if there is another metal to smelt with aluminium to make it a bronze color such as copper. i know copper with a small amount of aluminium is considered a bronze but i want a mixture with a higher aluminum content.

I've been buying up scrap brass from Goodwill and garage sales over the last few months and was planning on selling to the scrap yards. I've always been into lost arts and wanted to try to get into casting things and doing some metal art. I've watched a few hours of videos on youtube and have a pretty good idea on what's going on but I was hoping for some advice on making one from scratch and curious as to how much I should expect to spend on actually running it to melt the brass. I have about 60 pounds right now but they are mostly very small pieces like candle sticks and lamps I've stripped. All I'm looking to do is melt them down, refine them (just clean the slag well …

I need a lead hammer to help me persuade some Cast iron parts to move without breaking them, I was about to order one from Amazon but i remembered I have a block of lead setting out in one of my metal piles and I have an antique cast iron lead kettle and a lead ladle, I’ve never melted down anything before but I met folks who melted it for fishing sinkers so I figured it can’t be all that hard? Has anyone here ever casted a lead hammer? How did you go about doing the mold? the commercial ones I’ve looked at online have steel handles so I figured I’d just use a short piece of sucker rod for a handle, would it be best to cast the head onto a hand…

First run I have ever done making crucible steel. Firstly I want to add that I am very adept in the hearth refining process, or orishigane. At this point I pretty much make material between 1.3-1.8%C out of anything from bloom iron to crane cable. Well I have been doing a lot of studying in the realms of breaking this orishigane cold to get an inspection of the grain, and see if any colors pop out. Typically this causes many pieces to break off, smaller than I typically feel like dealing with. Having a surplus of this jewel steel, and I decided to breathe a new life in these collected piece by melting them in a crucible. These pieces range from 1.3-1.7%C for the most part…

It is important to protect your foundry from metal spills and flux. Putting a 3/8 inch or so layer on the bottom makes for easier clean up of any spilt materials and prolongs the life of your foundry. I used to use a layer of fine silica on top of my fire brick to protect them from spills. I recently switched to bone ash. It is much finer than silica and works better. More of a powder than a grain consistency. Technically the books calls for calcined bone ash. I used bone meal from Lowe's garden department. Initially it turned black upon the first firing, then turned into the desired white ash.