Melting Pewter?

I have some pewter that I bought at garage sales. Some of it is known pewter and some I just believe is pewter. I got a little lead flashing,a small melting pot, and some fishing sinker molds from my brother that I never knew he had. I would like to melt some of this pewter into different sized sinkers to store. Is there anything special I should know about melting pewter? And also, I plan on melting the unknown( what I think is pewter) seperately to be safe. Should I melt all my different pieces seperately? At a sale today they had some pewter plates. These were some type of special edition bicentennial. I wish I rememberes the markings on the back, but I dont. I believe there were 4 or 5 plates and just guessing I'd say they weighed 2.5 lbs a piece. They didnt have a price tag on them and the lady in charge of the sale was ready to leave for the day. Tommorrow when the sale resumes everything is half price. What would be a decent price for me to buy this 12.5 lbs of pewter? I'd really like to get it to melt, not collect. Believe me guys, I dont have a plate collection. Thanks for any and all comments. Tom

Modern pewter is 92% tin, 6.7% antimony and 1.2% copper. Wasn't always like that; hundreds of years ago it was half tin, half lead.

I wouldn't mix the unknown "possible pewter" with the "known pewter", as you might spoil the whole lot. As long as you keep it separate, you won't have a problem.

You have to be careful buying trinkets. Wilton makes a lot of the modern "pewter" plates and Wilton "pewter" is not pewter.

imashooter2: I found that out too...It's a composition called "Armitelle" and it's no good for bullets.

Plus 2 on what the other guys told you. No Wilton, No Armetale. Not pewter. It must be stamped pewter on the bottom. English pewter or whatever, but stamped as pewter. Makes good tin for adding to boolits. I use it myself.. Good luck Mike

I had the idea to melt a few old pewter tankards into small ingots. Bought a Lee pot and instructions say it cannot be used to melt pewter! Any comments?

Chance

Pewter melts at low temps, lead and lead alloys at higher temps. Hotter the pewter is the more the surface will oxidize losing you tin. My guess is the Lee pot adjustment doesn't go low enough for pewter.

Zinn is German/Dutch for tin and what they label pewter. Daldrop is a pewter company that as long as it feels and looks like pewter is probably pewter if made in Netherlands and made by Daldrop. Suspicious or unknown items do in small batches by themselves. If you have a thermometer and some known pewter you can heat it to melting point of pewter and see if unknown melts right away when dipped in. Zinc won't melt at pewter temps, high amounts of lead won't melt or melt slower than pewter would dipped in same temp of melt.

Don't be an idiot and turn a batch of good tin alloy into a pile of zinkers, it really makes you feel bad. No I don't want to talk about it.

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Originally Posted by Chance

I had the idea to melt a few old pewter tankards into small ingots. Bought a Lee pot and instructions say it cannot be used to melt pewter! Any comments?

Chance

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Saturday morning I loaded up my Lee 4-20 pot with pewter muffin ingots and poured it into two different 6 cavity 45 caliber lee molds. No problem at all and not the first time I've done it. Once the ingots melted I turned the dial all the way down which turned out to bee too cold as the spout froze. Turned the setting up a bit till the spout poured again and emptied the pot making pewter bullets. I add 4 to 6 of the pewter bullets to my alloy when casting.

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Originally Posted by The Dar

Saturday morning I loaded up my Lee 4-20 pot with pewter muffin ingots and poured it into two different 6 cavity 45 caliber lee molds. No problem at all and not the first time I've done it. Once the ingots melted I turned the dial all the way down which turned out to bee too cold as the spout froze. Turned the setting up a bit till the spout poured again and emptied the pot making pewter bullets. I add 4 to 6 of the pewter bullets to my alloy when casting.

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Many thanks - that is what I was hoping to hear. Is that 4-6 bullets mixed with pure lead? How much lead?

Chance

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Originally Posted by Chance

Many thanks - that is what I was hoping to hear. Is that 4-6 bullets mixed with pure lead? How much lead?

Chance

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Usually folks add 1-2% to their alloy to help with fill out.

"some I just believe is pewter."
Pewter items bend easily. Pewter will cut easily with a pocket knife.
Pewter is usually not assembled with rivets.
But melting point is definitive-check the unknown item in a melt of known pewter at the melting point.
Any stainless steel saucepan on a hotplate will serve to melt pewter. Aluminum mini cupcake pans make good molds.

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Originally Posted by Chance

Many thanks - that is what I was hoping to hear. Is that 4-6 bullets mixed with pure lead? How much lead?

Chance

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My alloy blend is 3 parts clip on wheel weights/2 parts range scrap. Fill the Lee pot and add the 4-6 pewter bullets. I get good fill out with that combination.

I have never scored enough Pewter to have a big smelt but I would melt the Hallmarked food service items separately from the picture frames and trinkets. I would also be very careful with anything without a Hallmark. A few members have reported on having Pewter items tested and finding that some of the non food service items have less tin and more lead.

Most of my tin comes from solder and I do mix it all together. Some of the older rolls are in such bad condition that yo can't read the labels. Oddly, test have shown that most of it turns out to be around 50-50.