stejens

That's how new I am to the hobby :P, I was looking to get one of those electrical 'LEE' melting pots for it, but then thought I'd look into making a 'do it all' one instead.

Thanks for your advice, I understand the importance of safety and will probably seek a class at some point. I wanted to melt the lead I have first as it is easy to melt, I manged to melt the small pieces on the stove in a steel milk pan, with my t-shirt over my nose and mouth to not breathe anything in, probably not the safest option so I will definitely seek some safety information. I poured it into a tiny little mould, but it was not enough to do much with. I just purchased one of those Rothenberger Superfire 2 blow torches from Amazon, that I figured will do the job for the small lead pieces I have. I also saw some micro forges on YouTube that used hand held blow torches that I thought I might try and build. All the dangers you mention I had not really thought of, like the shell casings, I check that they have all been fired, and live ones I find gets handed in to the cops. Always seems fun to me that I could potentially turn my scrap finds into something nice, made with the metals I personally find rather than buy casting alloy which would not be the same, but also as you mention there could be additional metals in them. I am from Lowestoft in the UK.

Thanks for replies, @Thomas I will check it out @Dwarf, I have heard about this fume fever, a mask will suffice?, I have bucket loads of brass shells and ordinance that I would need to melt down at some stage, but maybe for now I stick to copper until I have learnt more about the brass. I am happy to use proper tools and crucibles, cost is not an issue.

Hello all, I am from the UK and very new to this, I have been looking for a good forum to get advice and learn, this seems like an active place I am looking to buy or build a foundry to melt copper/brass, and use the molten metals to make castings. I have a hobby which is metal detecting, and with this hobby I collect so much scrap metal that I would like to work with it, so melting it all down and making cool things out of it seems the best route, and incredibly fun too. I have watched many videos on foundry builds, using coal or gas, the gas ones seem to be the cleanest, but after watching many there seems to be debate on what materials are better or more longstanding ceramic linings vs kaowool and the like. The wool seems to be hard to get hold of here, I went to my local DIY store and they don't stock it, they just have wire wool. Also it seems difficult to find the perfect guide on how to make one, what gas to buy, hoses, burners (etc). I guess I am only looking for a small one to start off with, enough space to melt copper/brass the size of a soda can, in the garden. Are there any complete lists of things to buy that you can recommend for this? I was looking at my local gas bottle supplier that have 3.6kg - 13kg bottles, and then I got stuck on what size burners fit them and if it's too little or too much for the size of furnace that I need. Any help appreciated.