Went cruising yard sales this morning. No pewter anywhere to be found but,,,,,,,
I was getting low on paraffin, of which I use quite a lot when smelting and blending alloy. When I find candles at yard sales and if I can just about steal them I pick them up. Today was spectacular for that, ended up with almost 11 pounds of big decorative candles and over 2 pounds of tapers. The tapers I will add to my stash of emergency lighting candles while the big ones will get melted and poured into min-muffin pans. The resulting wax "pucks" should be just about the right size to throw in the smelting pot as needed.
Oh yeah, total cost was $3.
At another sale I picked up two SS stock pots for $4. Probably 8 qt & 10 qt size with handles. They should make almost indestructible "hot buckets" to dump dross into when smelting. Steel 5 gal. buckets are scarce now and current galvanized pails are both expensive and not at all durable when used for 700° junk catchers.