Florida Man Metals

George Do you have to worry about spontaneous combustion due to oxygen absorption from the air? The oxidation causes a hot spot deep in the pile possibly causing it to ignite. I don't deal with coal I use propane in my foundry? Just curious thought this would be the best place to ask others opinion.

Fyi If you would have given us more information like your intended use we could of solved this for you day one. I would of told you to buy something like a lee lead hotpot. It has a heating element built into it. Add a rheostat or something to control the temp.

I would buy a quartz melt dish or something along those line if you're worried about carbon. I use a pretty large one for my silver pours. I'm not sure about a hot plate getting any crucible hot enough to be used in that manner (I maybe wrong). Why not a stainless steel bowl or something that transfer heat better and way cheaper?

Have you fired/used it yet. The only sure way to tell that i know of is to use it. It will form a hard outer layer that is grey in color. Nothing black should wipe off after it's first use. Graphite crucible are only good in electric furnaces. If you are using gas/propane the graphite crucible will erode away after just a few uses.

Novice here, but I would agree with Thomas. I pour my copper bars as soon as I can stir the pot with a graphite rod and not feel any solid pieces. The longer it is molten the more problems you will have. He mentioned an iron mold. How is he keeping the the metal from sticking? I coat my mold in soot from my furnace after I cut off the oxygen making it fuel rich. Similar to oxy/acetylene torches. The soot allows a route for the gases to escape around your bar vs trying to rise up the center. I also use an plate iron mold that isn't very tall to facilitate the escaping gases.

Appreciate it Frosty. I know I'm not exactly doing anything apples to apples with you folk, but my understanding is growing.

Frosty, you seem to be a wealth of knowledge with a knack for explaining idea to the uneducated (me). You brought up a good point about refractory cement. I also use fire bricks (rated for 2700°F) for the base of my furnace. Why would someone want to cement fire bricks together vs just stacking them? Wouldn't all the expansion just crack the mortar anyways? After all the repeated firings of my furnace the bricks have probably moved over an inch. I use a nice layer of super fine silica (aquarium sand) on the bottom of my furnace for that reason and to protect my fire brick from spills and whatnot. Actually, the ones I use are called insulating fire brick rated for 2500°f.

Speaking of sound I've seen a jeweler use essential a tall, big box full of sand for his anvil stand. He said it helped with dampening reverberation. Not sure how big of an anvil you could go thou.

I used a one inch ceramic fiber insulation blanket (rated for 2700°f) doubled up and lined it with a ceramic coating (100HT). Mine is more of a furnace than a forge but it gets Hot... All available from Amazon.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. Makes sense to me (the layman) in theory. However the sound the burner makes when I shut it off makes it seem possible. I have no understanding of the physics necessary to build a proper burner. I felt it was a safer option to buy a pre-built burner with a proper regulator from a company than risk a homemade one. The manufacturer recommended a flash suppressor. So I followed their advice. I guess better safe than sorry. Another case of the manufacturer trying to cover their *ss?

This might not be the right place for this but I was curious how many of you are actually using a back flow preventer? I haven't seen anyone mention this vital safety device. I have always used one installed on my propane supply line. It is designed to keep a flame from traveling down your gas line and reaching your tank. Boom.... And yes i have a real regulator attached to my propane tank. I'm rather new to this forum and this might have been answered already. If so please excuse. I don't really run a forge. I run a propane burner in my furnace to refine precious metals and cast base alloys. I'm talking fairly high temperatures. Hot enough to refine paladium from catalytic converters.

Lead free pewter is like saying fat free butter. There is almost always some amount of lead in every pewter alloy. Whether it is cross contamination from machinery or handling and storage. For instance, if the source tin came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo where they still use leaded gas it becomes contaminated. Lead, tin, and antimony is very hard to separate due to their similar compositions. To truly separate it you have to heat them to their vaporization points and vacuum separate them one at a time. I'm talking super high temperatures 2260°C for tin. Lead/tin alloys are still very prevalent today. They are mainly used in items meant for decoration like picture frames and whatnot. As for food safe. I honestly believe there is no such thing. Antimony is toxic. They say copper dishes leach toxins in your food. Same with cast aluminum. Profitable? Like I've said it all depends on how you buy and sell. If you buy all your pewter from the thift store you wouldn't nake a dime. I can fit 500 pounds of pewter in a 5 gallon bucket if it is cast in large bars. The alloys need to be sorted with xrf gun to make sure they are alike alloys so you don't get hit with penalties on say a hundred pound bar because you added a pound of Antimony to your 99 pound Britannia bar. My girl has family in Pennsylvania so I usually bring it up when we visit. The company keeps telling me I can send it up by freight but that's because they want to do more business with me more frequently. I only get paid for the tin content. They really want the free lead I give them. Lead is very useful for a multitude of scientific processes.

Word of advice. Fight the urge to pour large pewter bars. Melt and pour every item separate. Unless they are identical items from the same maker from the same time. Everyone keeps saying there isn't any tin smelters in the us. Technically smelters no, but there is a company called Tin Tech in Pennsylvania who refines tin from industrial producers who make items using tin. All different forms and compounds of tin. They use an xrf gun. It is a 500 pound minimum and took almost 2 months the last time I used them. Any pewter that contains antimony will be charged a penalty. I have personally shot (xrf) many pewter alloys over the years. I have seen so many other elements in them like arsenic and all kinds of other things I never would of thought would be in pewter.

Man I really need to reread and spell check before I upload. Forgive all the grammatical errors.

There really isn't any diffrence in buy from the thrift store vs the scrap yard besides the price. I use an old technique for sorting pewter alloys. If it does on the dinner table it is most likely not to contain lead. That being said lead free pewter can technically contains up to 1% lead of the total alloy. English pewter is easy to tell because it stays pretty white and Shiney even after a few years of oxidation because of the bismuth content. American pewters basic formula is 90% tin and 10% copper. It has a copper sheen appearance after oxidation. The only real diffrence is that the scrap yards melt pewter accent pieces of of silver plated brass. I get the same mugs, chargers, bowls and everything you buy from the thrift store buy at a better price. Every bin I pick up has some amout of sterling silver in it. Half the time the value of the silver pays for the bin.

I'm on the Treasure Coast. Yeah summer sucks here but the winter is like your summers in Wyoming. I don't know if I could do the Wyoming winters. It is 70°f right now.

I was stationed in El paso, Texas and when people asked me where I was located I told them North Mexico. I can easily see why some teachers taught that and wouldn't necessarily say they were wrong. No disrespect to your family but I don't think I ever had a class with them. Speaking in general.

*feasible See I told you the school system in florida is atrocious.

Thank you for the clarification. I had seen a few conflicting things mentioning tin in the northern hemisphere. That doesn't change the fact it is an unviable option here. If there isn't high enough concentrations to mine for tin which makes it economically pheasabil. We would have to mine other metals to capture it as a byproduct and We can't process it here. Sounds like we will always be dependent on southeast asia.

I never said tin had anything to do with the collapse of the internet or commodity trading. I said you need tin (solder) to make every electronic device. I also said tin is the only element not found in this hemisphere. Infer what you want from those implications. Truth be told I'm not very familiar with amway. I'm under 40 and the school systems in florida have never been very good. I have probably learned more from my smart phone in my 30 than they ever taught me. I will google amway thou.

I like how you over looked the tin part. But yes you are right I can't eat gold but I won't go hungry. Maybe I should be buying bitcoin like all the institutional investors. Just kidding. I'm not into mlm scams for men.

They talk about a green revolution and copper and all these other metals necessary to go green. I bet no one realizes everyone of those metals can be mined in America. Do you ever hear anyone mention tin. You can't make a single electronic device without. And it is the only metal we can't mine in this entire hemisphere. We can dig up lithium, uranium, gold, copper everything else even a lot of the rare earth elements. All the tin comes from southeast Asia. Good luck when China cuts us off.

As to how do you convert it into something useful like bread or eggs that is easy. It is essential the barter system. Precious metal will always be worth something and there is only a finite supply of it. Not to mention it can be made into something useful without modern machinary. Say you have eggs to barter with. What if the person has a gun for instance to trade. I don't need 2000 eggs at one time. Gold is the medium of exchange that can go in your pocket and no one will refuse. Gold hasn't increases in value the dollar has decreased in value. I have $5 indian head dollar gold coins from the 1920s worth more than $500 in melt alone today. The fed literally tells you they are shooting for 2% inflation rate. In a hundred years that means your dollar is worth nothing. The only better barter is bullets. Again thou try carrying a couple thousand rounds around with you. Gold has always been for barter and always will. Heck yeah I seperate my pennies. Pennies cost a heck of a lot more than a cent to buy or make. I do this with a scale. Copper pennies weigh a full gram more than the zinc ones after 1982. I know it is against the law to destroy currency. That is until the value of the metal changes. For instance it isn't against the law to melt silver change because of the diffrence in value between the face and melt value. Look at Canada for instance who done away with pennies. Just look at the price of zinc to buy online not even considering the price of copper.

I disagree I own everything Shiney. It all depends on how you buy, and how you sell. I spent so many years avoiding gold because of the price. Only bought silver. I went heavy into silver back in 2019 and bought a lot. Bought it off a guy on Craigslist. He was diagnosed with Lou Garrison disease and didn't want his wife to have to deal with it after he was gone. I started out buying all his .999 silver for spot. He was happy and I was happy not paying a premium above spot. Then he offered me his coin collections which I wasn't really interested in. He explained that the coins are insurance if the price of silver falls. I bought all the Morgan and Peace dollars he had. On the nice ones I paid a two dollar premium and the not so nice ones spot. I didn't pay a penny over 22 dollars on the nicest coins. The uglier on were like $14 a piece. You can't find a cull silver dollar for less than 25 to 30 dollars today. That was 4 years ago. I finally got into gold at $1800. Gold is 2100 now. I kick myself for all the times I said gold was to expensive for me at $1400. Again thou when I say $1800 that is what spot was and what I paid for it. I would go to the pawn shop and buy all I could afford at 100% of spot price. The pawn show could only get 95% of spot from the refiner. He was more than happy to sell me all he could. If you are selling scrap/jewelry you will get 70%. So I would inquart it with silver and purify it into 24k. Now when I need to sell i get 100% of spot because it is in Bullion form and he can put it in his case vs sending it to the refiner. Everything is an investment. The scrap yard will pay say 4 dollars a pound for copper, but if you buy copper Bullion it is a dollar an ounce. Doesn't make sense to ever sell copper to me. I only sell brass.

Truth be told the only real profitable business plan I have come up with is a pawn shop. In July of last year Ron DeSantis changed the laws on 2nd hand goods. If the metal is in Bullion form and stamped with a weight and purity it is no longer considered a 2nd hand good. In other words if someone sells the pawn shop Bullion they can literally turn around and sell it to the next customer in line. You no longer have two hold the item for two weeks unless it is jewelry/scrap. So if I owned a pawn shop and buy scrap gold for 70% of spot (which is what they pay here). I would hold it for two weeks to make sure it isn't stolen. Refine it to 24karat and stamp it with a weight and purity and put it in the case with a 10% markup to sell. That is an easy 40% profit margin. Just need someone with deep enough pockets to back me. That is the only truley profitable business that I have come up with to pay for my hobby.