"tin" cans

[fireflyfather]

Um, this may be the stupidest question of all time here, but is there some reason that people don't melt down tin cans for the tin? (bad alloy, tin not used anymore, etc...)

[beagle]

Good thought but tin cans nowadays are steel. If they were tin, they'd be far more expensive.

Our most available sources of tin these dats are 50/50 solder bars for plumbers and scrap from radiator shops./beagle

[mooman76]

I here if you could find some of the old toothpaset tube around, they were made of tin!

[Bullshop Junior]

The term tin can was shortened from tined can. It was always a steel can with the interior surface plated with tin, and the seem solderd with tin. Now I think they are coated with some type of plastic.
Old toothpast tubes were tin but now are plastic coated aluminum.
Still just a junk man at heart!
BIC/BS

[fireflyfather]

I figured it was something like that.

[Leftoverdj]

The foil covering the cork on the better wines is said to be tin, but if you drink enough wine to accumulate a reasonable amount of tin, you have no business shooting.

[WineMan]

Some are tin and very pure too. They used to be lead but concerns of toxic metal on a "food" product changed them to pure tin in the late 1980's. Lead being softer (and cheaper) was easier to apply to the bottles.

I use a fair amount of them for wines that has retail value of >$10 per bottle. For less expensive wines we use a plastic and aluminum laminated material. You can tell the difference because the tin capsules are made from a 80-100 micron thick disk and are one piece. The polylams have a side seam and a seperate top. The price of tin is forcing many to got to the cheaper polylams ($0.04 vs ~$0.15 each) for everything.

I toured the factory in Spain a few years ago and the tin is a continuous sheet (about a foot wide) that starts at the forge and keeps getting thinner and faster until it is cut off. Interestingly they do not roll it as that stretches it. It is folded back and forth into plastic milk crates and then sent to the machines for punching and forming. It was pretty neat and I have two bars of pure tin that they make for guests. I am not smelting these. I was also given a rock matrix with cubic (about a cubic inch each) of pure tin "crystals". It also resides on my ego shelf.

I recycle any that get wrinkled when applied (like the trapped finger toy we stretch a capsule down to fit snugly with spinning rollers) and ones from wine poured for tourists and home consumption.

I usually sort the polylams out but if a stray one gets into the pot it floats and does not melt (sort of like Zinc WWs).

Since they are painted the smelting process is quite smoky and outdoors is best.

After three months of recycling I smelted down 5 lbs of tin as half pound ingots.

But as was said you need a lot of wine to get a little tin.

Dave

[Single Shot]

Thanks for the wine seal tip.

I have a friend that manages a high end restaurant. I'll ask him to start saving the seals.:drinks:

[Dale53]

My youngest son used to be in the wine business. He saved and gave me several pounds of tin salvaged from wine bottles.

Kind of in the same vein, I also have some commercial beer cooler coils that are tin. I am SURE that now they use plastic tubing.

Dale53