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I Forge Iron

i wonder if this will work?


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First allow me to explain the idea.
I've always been one who loves to be resourceful with what i find around me.
My dad and i are hunters, so we both go to the shooting range on occasion. A thought recently occurred to me, is it possible to take old bullet casings (.22 and the like) and melt them down into a usable brass bar?

I've yet to round up all items required for the skill, but i still wish to get a few ideas out. :P

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Can it be done? Most definitely. Is it cost effective vs buying brass bar stock? Depends on how you value your time. Since you're talking about melting a zinc alloy, make sure you know what you're about and observe all due safety precautions. Speaking from first-hand experience, zinc poisoning is no fun.

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My recommendations if you're interested in tinkering with foundry work would be to skip brass altogether, get your rig built then buy some silicon bronze shot to play with.

If you're set on working brass then I can't stress this enough:

* get a pyrometer BEFORE you start tinkering and keep a close eye on your melt temps
* if a melt gets too hot and the zinc starts to vaporize (great billowing clouds of white smoke) kill the heat source and get AWAY

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Pyrometers are not the cheapest piece of equipment to purchase but one of the best to have to determine pouring temperatures. I have had one young fellow want to know why his pot of aluminum keep going away on him and another fellow ended up hospitalized while casting his own bullets when he got h e lead pot way to hot and started vaporizing his lead. I have found that the best thing to do with empty brass is the take it the metal recycler and get cash for it and save up to by good quality clean ingots is you are all serious about casting. I used to play around quite a bit with salvaged brass and copper but after awhile you get tired of less than stellar results and start buying first class alloys like silicon bronze that pour like water and don't have all the gassing issues. Oh, I still scrounge every piece of brass no matter what kind it is, plumbing, cartridges, candle sticks, whatever and when I get twenty-five pounds or so I take it to the metal recycler and get cash for it. Some of this stuff from China and India you just don't know what's in it so why not recycle it and send it back to them to get sick from the fumes. You go buy some decent alloyed ingots or casting grain. Much safer that way. :blink:

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I will definitely keep this at heart. I was hoping since im new to the skill it would be good for practice.
No worries, ill definitely hit the books hard before I do anything.

Practicing casting with brass is kind of starting at the top. Good casting practice can start with plaster, then wax, then lead, then aluminum, then bronze, then finaly brass. At each step skills are mastered which enable the next step. At each step the danger increases exponentialy, hence the need for experience from the lower melting temperture mediums first. Defenitely "hit the books" first, as you said.
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Can shell casings be used? Yes is the quick answer, I've heard of those who have done this. The biggest problem is you will lose about half the metal as dross, melting thin stuff with lots of surface area (shells, swarf, etc) can be difficult and isn't the most efficient method. Save 'em though, with the price of scrap the way it is they could be worth something the way they are. Also, I too would be concerned with getting a "live" one, longshot I know if you pick 'em up yourself, but one should never tempt Murphy. Like the others said, start with something a bit on the cooler side to get the hang of the process, aluminum is useful,common, and fairly easy to melt and cast.

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A couple of years ago shell casing were going for $2 a pound. A las Vegas range that I know was generating 160,000 casings a week. If they are clean and sorted, reloaders will buy them, especially pricey rounds like 500 S&W, 338 Lapua, anything Weatherby, 5.7 FN, ,,,,,,I have found all of these at various ranges.

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Savvy ranges don't give the stuff away, they sell and salvage it themselves. When I was a dedicated hand loader I policed up all of my own brass and any other that was just laying about before the range master picked it up at the end of the day. I used to load for over forty different calibers so with me nothing was left on the ground. The range sold pistol and rifle brass and then once a month the would take a big load to the salvage yard. Most ranges don't just give it away. I found a lot of brass out at the wildcat ranges in the desert, some guys just don't have a clue at how expensive once fired brass is and just leave it on the ground. Most recycled metal is done in very large quantities and in highly controlled atmospheres to cut down on the loss due to dross. Aluminum can are done in electric furnaces and in large quantities to cut down on this loss.
Read your books, study how the ancients did it and then be safe, getting burned hurts like crazy!

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One tip for melting cartridge cases is to melt a small ingot first. Then submerge your (COMPLETELY DRY, PREHEATED AND PRIMER-FREE) cases in the molten bath to melt them. That cuts down some on oxidation losses.

I melted a bunch of scrap .223 a while back. Even though they were all previously fired empties, one of them somehow had something live in it. Whole primer, some unfired primer compound, I don't know what. I have no good explanation. All I know is that it went into the hot crucible and a few seconds later it went bang. Fortunately it was not submerged in liquid brass at the time, so it was a non-event -- except for the effect it had on my heart rate. Kind of put me off wanting to melt cases, though.

Did I mention that anything you put in the crucible needs to be completely dry, preheated, and primer-free? Even a tiny bit of moisture is a Bad Thing.

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That thing about completely dry is very important. More accidents with molten metal are from moisture than pro ably most other things. I was over at a friends house while he was pouring some bronze and he had some left over in the pot so he started pouring it in his ingot mold, guess what, yeah that's right he hadn't preheated it and that bronze became casting grain real quick. Went all over the place when the condensate on the cold cast iron mold turn to steam. Good thing we all had our leathers on. One year at the iron pour some of the young bucks decided to have some fire works so they hosed down the ground, got it nice and wet, then took the last ladle of molten iron and just started pouring it on the wet ground. It was a spectacular display of erupting sparks and small globs of iron. The next year the picture of that was on a tee shirt for everyone to buy. It was not the safest of displays to do but being young is not always about being safe I guess. It's a wonder that some of us bucks get to be old. Those of us who like to play with fire are right on the edge anyway.<_<

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  • 6 years later...

Good Morning Folks, 

I have melted range brass using a O/A rosebud once (and only once) and the distressing part, other than the depressing amount of gas I used (from doing it wrong), was the left over charge in the spent brass cooking off in front of me. I was thinking I might put the brass in a steel pot and heat it up to aluminum melt temp to let anything that will cook off cook off and then charge the crucible. I figure this will make the brass oxidize but I can live with that. Do you think this will work to make the brass safer to work with? Should I cut the end off of center-fire shells that if I don't have the de-priming die for my reloading press? From Matt's post I am going to assume that I don't want to rely that a shot primer is a safe primer. 

Thanks  

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Dwarf, 

I have read up on the fever but thank you for the reminder. Nothing like a world class case of the flu you can not do anything about until the zinc oxide clears your system. I plan to do the melt outside with 2 fans for ventilation. Any thoughts on clearing any unused propellant in the brass? I wonder if the tarnish on the brass will revert to copper or become dross. 

 

Ernest    

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If you MUST melt your brass, burn it first and flux it in the crucible before you start the melt. Borax works fine, it will be anhydrous long before the brass starts to melt. It will foam up as the water cooks out and coat the cartridges then it will float on the surface providing a prophylactic barrier to oxygen. It will also consolidate and entrap impurities so you can rake them off before the pour. 

Even if you keep the melt below the flash point for zinc (the temperature it ignites at the ambient oxy level) zinc still evaporates and oxidizes. 

While zinc oxide is NOT a heavy metal, is water soluble and is in fact a necessary nutrient BREATHING IT IS NOT THE PROPER MANNER OF INGESTION!

It does B-A-D things in and to your lungs, blue flu is only a symptom, not the problem. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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clearing the zinc oxide is quick compared to regrowing the lining in your lungs, in the US what would happen if the fumes you create affected someone else nearby?

it can kill if they have other problems to do with breathing.

tarnished brass will not become copper and when melting copper remember it really likes oxygen so do everything to keep it away or you can get a copper sponge

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Frosty, you can't argue with the words "prophylactic barrier". 

I don't know that I MUST melt the brass but my Nephew has been asking me to help him with either a brass or bronze melt and I did not know where I might find copper that would not cost an arm + leg. I would assume that as long as I observed the safety information posted here and other places such as being outside, up wind and maintain situational awareness of where the fumes were going I would make it out w/o doing any damage to my lungs. And I have talked with Glenn about the events leading to the passing of  Paw-Paw Wilson so I have zinc and the fumes in the same category with carbon monoxide and other things you don't want to breath. 

Please let me know if I am incorrect about the residual risk of melting the brass out side, up wind and in my back yard (80 feet by 103 feet) then I will abandon this idea. I had thought it could be done without getting someone sick or dead. 

Respectfully yours

Ernest.

If I do go ahead with the melt I plan to cook the brass in a steel pot around the melting point of aluminum with Borax as a flux to make sure there is no live propellant in the spent primers. If anyone knows if that will or will not work please let me know. I would rather things cook off when the brass is not in the liquid state.

 

 

 

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Ernest: It CAN be done safely but I can NOT, WILL NOT encourage it. Just buy some "Silicon Bronze" proper flux, plaster of Paris and sand for investment molds. Investment is easier than green or resin bonded sand casting. There are bunches of easily available books with how to's including specific safety practices to make bronze casting a reasonably safe home project. Aluminum is hazardous but a good start as it's much lower melt so a little safer. Get it on you and it's just a screamingly painful 3rd. degree burn rather than the 4th of molten bronze.

You'll spend a LOT less on a couple ingots of good casting bronze than just the ventilation necessary to assure yourself you aren't breathing BADNESS.  

One of the biggest dangers of casting bronze is maintaining dry conditions, a drop of water will expand a couple THOUSAND times in volume on contact with molten bronze. PPE and a sand pan over which to move and pour is a MUST.

Sell the brass to the scrapper and buy Silicon Bronze. You'll get better results be safer and not have to listen to me harping at you. Heck, getting me to shut up aught to be worth it. B)

Frosty The Lucky.

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Frosty, 

I do trust you and I will follow your advice. Is there any difference in the risk level between melting and silicon bronze or melting copper and adding tin if I can find enough scrap copper? 

I think this video cover what you are talking about with the dangers of steam 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=68&v=A796N_YZTm8

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1 hour ago, eseemann said:

...I did not know where I might find copper that would not cost an arm + leg.

Make friends with plumbers and electricians. They have scrap all the time and some are willing to part with a little from time to time. When I worked in home remodeling we had a plumber that would come out and would do the job but not get all the old pipe. Often it was because of where it was at under the house it was difficult to get out without a special trip. The electrician we used was the same. He's get the easy stuff and leave the harder stuff for me. He even saved some shorter (less than 12" pieces) for me on occasion instead of taking them with him. 

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Mike, I don't really have an occasion to meet either type of tradesmen but I understand what you are talking about. I am going to see if the local pre-cut stock yard (scrap yard) will see the copper they buy from other people with the appropriate markup. 

Ernest  

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