just putzing around with my furnace and i'd like to make some bronze what in todays age contains enough tin to use (thats cheap or scrap) ive seen pewter used but that doesnt fall into either category

 

pewter is tin .... in fact modern pewter is close to pure tin with a little antamony and  copper...old pewter has lead in it ...

what i meant was, what can i find in a scrapyard thats made of tin? im thinking pennies not dollars

Not that I have found to date. Go to junk stores and flea markets. Looks for pewter cups. That is a cheapish way to go. At $9.00 a pound for tin the scrap yards do just that, they scrap it. Sort of like copper. Years ago you could fine copper in a scrap yard that was too much work to scrap. Now it is worth too much to leave in the yard. At $20.00 a pound for food grade tin is about the best I have seen so far. http://www.rotometals.com/Tin-Ingot-s/27.htm

I second the Rotometals

I go to Goodwill and buy pewter mugs for $1.99 to $2.99 and that's a good amount of pewter for making bronze in a home foundry. Yeah some of it has antimony or bismuth with a tad bit of copper but it's not that much and it does work well. It is probably of equal or better quality tin than they had in the Bronze Age. The pewter mugs from the thrift stores may turn out to be more per ounce than if you purchased a whole ingot of tin but they are close at hand, no waiting time involved for shipment to arrive and no worry as what to do with the rest of ingot. And if you buy two mugs you can watch you melt through the glass bottom of the other mug while chugging your beer.

I would be shocked if 1% of the tin from the bronze age was as fine as the Goodwill mug-aqured pewter/tin. Thing to keep in mind is the Bronze age smith was going by sight sound and feel. They would be able to tell if something had some lead, antimony, bismuth or copper but only if there was enough to mess up the batch. 

goodwill stores? are they charity shops?

Why not just buy some bronze? It is available.

I think Grimme, like myself, is working on the basis of limited funds. 

making is more fun, and good knowledge with experience is invaluable. anyone can buy anything. copper can be free, along with pewter. i guess bronze can be as well. i`ve had good luck with aluminium bronze. about 10% aluminium to 90% copper by weight, but google it first. very hard wearing, also hard to file, shape and polish.  

I cast with pewter that I buy off of ebay.

I saw some today for $18 for 3 lbs, and with pewter making up 10% of tin bronze, 3 lbs equals 30 lbs of tin bronze.

 

Not a terrible price per lb.

here a lot of pewter contains lead, modern stuff is lead free but check older stuff is not a lead pewter rather than tin

No Lead Solder: 98% tin 2% antimony.  I look for it cheap at the fleamarket and garage sales as it's generally a more expensive way to buy tin at the store compared to rotometals by the ingot!  (The no lead solder I let the grandkids play around with on their miniature anvils...)

Well, bronze made with lead and little to no tin might not be healthy, but it wasn't exactly unheard of either in antiquity. (It's a lot more soft and ductile)

 

Arsenic was also used, but you know, being poisonous and all........maybe not such a good idea.  As with any non-ferrous work, always take maximum effort to avoid metal poisoning/toxicity.

 

Basically, the white metals tend to get found close together, and people weren't always terribly discerning. If you're just going for look pretty, could try architectural bronze, which i like to think of as extreme brass. Around 60 percent copper, balance in that wonderfully dangerous zinc. Maybe a little lead for fun.

 

Tin is getting constantly rarer. According to the wikipedia it's gonna be extinct in the wild in 20-40 yrs. Recycled tin only after that!