Cutting pewter

[brewer12345]

I was advised by helpful posters that I could probably just cut up a pewter tankard and drop hunks in for tin when I melt up a pot of lead. All fine and well. However, I also have a platter that weighs almost 6 pounds and is 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick that I would rather cut up than smelt. Will a pair of snips do this? What is the best tool for this called?

[Beagle333]

Tin snips. It'll plow right through it. I just cut mine up into chunks and then just stack chunks on the kitchen scale until I get whatever weight I figured needed added to the pot.

[Grmps]

Some people like to smelt their pewter then cast it into round balls so they have an accurate measurement of what they are adding without weighing every time.

[Beagle333]

Those little pewter ingots that I get from imashooter2 that are already weighed and marked are extremely convenient. If you have time and want to smelt it into small ingots or balls of known weight, that is pretty handy later.

[imashooter2]

A bench vise and a big pair of channel locks lets you tear chunks out of it. A hatchet on a 4x4 makes short work of it too.

But I’d still rather roll it up, feed it into my pot and cast the small ingots.

[brewer12345]

I don't smelt lead, so I either have to buy the stuff to do it or melt it in my bottom pour pot, which I am reluctant to do. Will try a pair of tin snips.

[lightman]

A pair of aviation snips should make short work of your pewter.

[RogerDat]

Pewter melts at lower temperature than lead alone, can easily be done in a 1 or 2 quart sauce pan on a $20 hot plate. Bought the pan at Salvation Army, not sure about the price but under $5 I'm sure. I cut up by scrunching until it fits in pot, then hitting with propane torch if I'm impatient.

One reason it might be worth doing the melt down into balls or ingots first is that pewter tarnish will become an oxide layer on your melt so melting first and fluxing with wax or sawdust then skimming will give you cleaner pewter. Tankards with glass bottoms have putty sealing them, another item that melting first allows you to clean out of your pewter before use. By melting multiple items one gets a more consistent pewter to add to your melt. Pewter can vary on percentages of "supporting" alloy such as antimony or copper. Having had several batches XRF gunned I can say mine has varied in tin content between 85% to 97% with other metals making up the difference. Last but not least if you make a mistake and it's not pewter or is an odd alloy it may well melt in your molten lead at casting temps but would be sitting there un-melted in a pot of pewter. Where if you aren't thinking you hit it with a torch to help it melt only to suddenly realize that the frame and handles part is different and probably not pewter but some funky zinc alloy... but we don't want to talk about that. Other than to say I am sure that 1% zinc in ones WW alloy will cast fine especially with plenty of pewter.

Not that these items are "end of the world" to have end up in your casting pot but not especially desirable either.

[brewer12345]

I have only bought stuff with.UK or Norwegian hallmarks, and obvious ones at that. You guys were not kidding about the snips. Cutting up tankards is like construction paper. The 6 pound platter is proving to be a challenge, though.

[deac777]

I use small bolt cutters to cut the handles off of tankards and pitchers and aviation snips for everything else.

[imashooter2]

Clamp handle in bench vise. Place hammer handle in mouth of mug or pitcher. Twist. The handle is off

[woodbutcher]

I picked up a nice pewter platter a couple of weeks ago at a yard sale a couple of towns over.A friend wanted me to ride along with her,as she hates to go very far from home alone.So I paid about &6.00 for it.Got home and I thought that before I got smash happy,I would have it checked out.
Glad that I did.Turned that $6.00 into $125.00.SOOOOOOOOOOOOO long story short.Check before demolition.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

[imashooter2]

Were you told it was worth $125 or did someone give you $125 for it?

[woodbutcher]

Yes.I got $125.00 for it from the people that I had check it out.Very nice profit for me that day.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

[imashooter2]

Congratulations! Nice when fate nods your way.

[quail4jake]

Pewter is very variable, some has Sb, Cu, Cd and Pb in it. It is rarely pure Sn. I evaluated the risk of unreliable source of Sn producing unreliable alloy and decided to beg off the pewter thing. That being said, I found a bunch of hokey mugs in a junqe shop for cheap and melted them down, the alloy melted at the right temp but was way hard so I stored it away waiting for some way to analyze it. If you want to cut up a platter etc. I would take a torch to it but...caveat emptor!

[brewer12345]

Pewter is very variable, some has Sb, Cu, Cd and Pb in it. It is rarely pure Sn. I evaluated the risk of unreliable source of Sn producing unreliable alloy and decided to beg off the pewter thing. That being said, I found a bunch of hokey mugs in a junqe shop for cheap and melted them down, the alloy melted at the right temp but was way hard so I stored it away waiting for some way to analyze it. If you want to cut up a platter etc. I would take a torch to it but...caveat emptor!

As opposed to the extremely well known exact composition of range scrap, WWs, etc.? Good one. Practically speaking, modern stuff will be 9X% tin and the vast majority of the additional components are helpful to my alloy, especially Sb and Cu. The hard pewter you ran into probably had a bunch of Sb in it. I am buying it primarily to add to SOWWs and (especially) range lead. Much of my shooting is modest pressure handgun loads (38 special and the like), so as COWWs become more scarce I expect to make do with softer sources of lead that are especially low in tin. 3 to 5% tin (in the form of pewter) will do fine for almost everything I cast and for the small volume of rifle boolits I cast I can either break out the COWW stash or buy some superhard alloy from rotometals and dial up the metal composition I need by adding some superhard and pewter to soft stuff.