Brassman

21 hours ago, Frosty said:

Welcome aboard Brassman, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you'll have a chance of hooking up with members living within visiting distance. 

What kind of protective gear do you have and use? What kind of floor or casting pan do you use?

From your question I get the impression you are teaching yourself casting. Handling molten metals is inherently very dangerous. One mistake can cause life altering injuries and fires. 3rd and 4th degree burns can hurt for the rest of your life and take many months to heal enough to take up normal activities again. Just a drop or two of water can empty a 10lb. flask in a steam explosion blasting molten metal 30-40' in every direction. 

I highly recommend you find and take a casting class or better yet a course. Trying to figure brass casting (a B A D choice of metals to cast) is submitting applications for a Darwin Award, every single time you light the melter.

Frosty The Lucky. 

Thanks for the reply! I'm in New Jersey in the US. I've attached the pictures of the safety gear I've been using. That's in addition to a respirator, steel toe boots, and safety goggles. I'm a Locksmith by trade (hence why brass was my first choice, since I'm sitting bn about 12 buckets full of locks, which is typically an amalgam of brass, aluminum, cast aluminum, and steel). The floor I used, was the asphalt on my driveway, as I didn't feel comfortable doing this indoors yet, and didn't care to make my family homeless. Being in the trades, and being a union man, I'm certainly no stranger to using the appropriate PPE. 

While I haven't taken any courses or classes, I've watched a significant amount of videos and done a little bit of research, so I definitely didn't just decide to, blindly start casting metal. It's obviously very dangerous even under the best of circumstances, and I reached out to someone who's done it before who gave me lots of pointers and safety information, including preheating things as to avoid steam explosions. I didn't reach out to him initally, as I only have an email for him, and it was doubtful I'd get an immediate response.  All that being said, I'm thankful for any advice you all can provide, and thanks for entertaining the post! 

22 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Sounds like you may have cooked off the zinc, was it flaring?  Generally cheaper to discard and start over than trying to frankenstein a melt back to usability once it's been cooled.  (Catching it before it transitions and getting it back usable is just common practice..)

Loss of zinc decreases fluidity for pouring and increases melting temp as it gets closer to copper.  Copper has a real affinity for O2 and turns to a copper coloured *ceramic* that really needs to be ground up and re smelted to be usable for melting again.

Note that breathing the fumes put off by cooking out the zinc can put you in the hospital OR WORSE!

THIS is what I was looking for! I'd wondered if I'd either burned off all the zinc, or burned it altogether. Going back on it in my mind, (hindsight and all) I definitely did see the zinc fumes, but didn't really think that's what it was. 

|Copper has a real affinity for O2 and turns |to a copper coloured *ceramic* that really |needs to be ground up and re smelted to |be usable for melting again.

Yes! I was trying to figure out how to describe it, and after it cooled, the bottom is brass in the shape of the crucible, and the top looks like hard volcanic ash, rocky, etc.

I think to things affected this melt compared to the first, well, a bit of ignorance too. 

1) The infrared thermometer I had didnt go above 610° F, which I didn't know until Sunday. I've since ordered and received one.

2) Not having a regulator valve with a guage on it. I had ZERO idea what level it was at. (On it's way to me now)

These 2 things would have allowed me to have more data with which to fine tune and know when it was time to pour, or that adding a mortise cylinder with is nearly solid brass would cool it significantly, even with pre-heating.

Thanks for the reply! I'll post pictures of the 2 melts here later when I get back home.

Hello all, hope you all had a great weekend. So, this is my second melt. The first went okay, poured it into a graphite mold and wasn't crazy about it, so thought today I'd try melting another ingot. Thing were going well, I had molten brass in the crucible, and decided to add a few more things, wait for it to melt, skim some slag, and then pour. I turned off the gas, stirred in the now nearly melted items I had added, then turned the gas back on again so that it could be nice and molten. When I went back to skim, it was pretty xxxx hard to skim, xxxx everything seems kind of, hard. I started to think maybe I burned it all, and everything that's in there is just ruined brass, or did it cool down too much? I have no way to tell. I will say the little bit I skimmed off the top looks like brass ash kind of. It's out there on and I hope it gets molten again, but I think it's a lost cause. Thoughts? Any ways to check for sure? is it just red hot but just ash and never going to get molten again? Thanks in advance for your input and help.