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I Forge Iron

Forging copper with steel


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  • 3 months later...

I was curious about this since I work at an electrical supply house, I have access to small bits of copper all the time. I was really curious what the result would be doing a canister with powdered metal (I do not see the point in trying high carbon with this but may be wrong) that also contains some nickel, nails and a few strands of copper thrown in. I know the copper would melt well before the steel, but wouldn't the canister contain it? Would the result even be anything of worth?

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Depends what you mean by "worth".  Not any good for making a blade but might be useful for knife furniture.  You would need to check out if the molten copper would "wet" the other metals or if they would dissolve in it.  (Copper will dissolve in molten Aluminum even though it melts at a much higher temp!)  Also you will need to watch out for density differences; if any of the add ins will float on molten copper it will affect your design.  Investigate various ways of patinating the results too.

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A bunch of years back when I was still in the scrap industry I worked at a plant that made Babbitt.  The antimony had a higher melting temp than the tin and was less sense so it would float on top of the molten metal line ice cubes in a beverage.  Anyway this topic has me curious.  I was going to start making some more steel roses and I wonder if I could get the copper to stock to one side of the petals.

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  • 2 months later...

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