Yes theres stores for that around. Gud idea on bracing it. Got sum wire at home.

So i thort id be rebel and use the steel one i made and it worked fine, just gotta sand up the piece and a pic will be up shorty.

glad to hear it worked and you are presumably unharmed :) looking forward to seeing the results!

Haha the results. Yes well to be honest there isnt much difference in color except the wierd thing is that after the pour, the surface of the ingot if you may call it that was that of a copper color and was that color for about .005 or sumthing and then after that layer got filed off the color became gold as if it was normal brass. I tried forging it and worked about 10 blows and started to crack. I wasnt using a mould tho, simply pouring onto a thick steel plate. I surrounded it with fire brick incase it stayed liquid enough to run off but it simply sat there and solidified. Well im ganna try again sum time and add more copper to see how the color changes. Will keep you updated.

Oh and any ideas for a small mold about 5"X1.5" and say 6mm deep?

I might about actualy keep doing this from time to time.

most alloys of brass are not forgeable

that top layer is probably a skin of oxidized copper, that or it didn't mix fully and some of the copper migrated to the top.

 

from what I have read brass and bronze are tough to forge, I missed a class to learn how to forge bronze and I definitely regret not making that happen :(

 

as for the mold.  you can make a really simple ingot mold using two flat plates and bending a piece of square bar into an elongated U shape.  prep the inside surfaces with some kind of antibond (acetylene soot, whiteout, forge scale, whatever) then sandwich the U bar between the plates and clamp the whole thing together very securely.  and presto! you have a mold! then you can just pop the clamps and separate the ingot from the U bar.

 

you can try going Japanese style with the pour as well, iv never tried it myself but its a pretty low tech way to get the job done, less of a controlled shape afterwards though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVUYH_vvZE

 

cool result too, thanks for sharing :)

Actually if would have been zinc depleted as the pouring temp for brass is higher than the burning out temp of zinc.  Having to add zinc to make up what has off-gassed is a common thing in brass casting.  Luckily nowadays the US mint makes a handy zinc packet in a copper shell with a picture of Lincoln on it.

 

Note that the zinc fumes can make you sick!  Metal Fume Fever

Yup. Any gas with wierd colors i stay wel away from.

Im going to simply sit the ingot i made on the forge floor with a copper tip or 2 ontop of it and as so as the tips melt and become level with the rest of the molten pool i will shut off the gas, quench and sand to see.

hard to actually judge because you started with unknowns and subsequently mixed them, giving you some true mystery meat, but brass typically melts a few hundred degrees F sooner than copper (again alloy dependent).  so i would expect the new brass-ish ingot to go before the copper tips do.  this would also be a good time to employ one of those bricks or some other kind of liner to keep from messing up your forge floor in the process.

 

good call thomas, that makes more sense, i forgot about zinc burnout =/

Ain't it just one of the funest things on earth messing around with molten metal, just be safe as this stuff will scar you for life, both on the inside and on the outside, please be careful.

It is rather fun but yup safety 1st

I have a idea for you take a peace of 1" or 1 1/2" braded cable and heat it to a forge weld heat flux it realy good and dip it into the molten brass several times it will come out great. You can also dip it in some light acid to get a better color in the cable.