Pewter Ingot Mold, Wild Hair Idea #2,998

[Alan in Vermont]

Now that I am finding more Pewter I was giving some thought to having a mold to make 1+/- oz. ingots.

I have been casting Pewter "coins" in mini-muffin pans. It works good but requires that I weight, and mark, each ingot. If I had something that would cast a repeatable weight somewhere near an ounce, and distinctive enough to not be confused with a bullet I could just grab however many needed to reach any quantity of tin going into an alloy.

I knew I had a ruined Lyman 429244, a double cavity, small blocks, that someone had hogged out with a drill bit in one cavity. Plan was that maybe I could hog it out, in both cavities this time, almost to the bottom of the blocks. Turns out that it wasn't viable as drilling the cavities deeper, in those small blocks was going to run the cavities right through the alignment pins.

Then I remembered that I also had a DC Lee 45 caliber, 500 Gr. spitzer mold, originally bought to use in a 45-70 revolver. It cast undersized so was no use for that project.

But, that should make nicely uniform pewter "bullets" weighing very close to my desired 1 oz. It's far enough removed from anything else I cast so as not to be confused with any real boolits.

Love it when a plan happens to fall together.

[Conditor22]

I cast all mine into .5 oz boolits
Easy to add when alloying and I just toss one in the pot if I don't get good mold fill out.

[bangerjim]

I just use my standard 4 slot LEE molds and fill the cavities 1/2 way. Gives nice flat uniform ingots from the 1 oz and the 05 oz slots.

I put a mark with a carpenter's flat pencil on the insides to know where to fill to. Works great with what I already have.

If you have lots of pewter, solder and tin (over 400# like I do) being super accurate and "miser-rationing" it on the weight is not of great importance.

banger

[lightman]

The last time I melted scrap solder I used a friends Lee ingot mold and only used the 2 smaller cavities. I know a few casters that use their largest bullet mold but there is a possibility of accidentally getting them mixed up.

[Dusty Bannister]

Any bullet mold that will give about the selected weight in tin would be fine. Just swat them with a large hammer to flatten them a bit and you will never confuse the tin from the cast bullet.

[LabGuy]

Might try a fishing sinker mould.

[kevin c]

I now mix my casting alloy in bulk so I just weigh a pile of pewter ingots and small coins, adding, subtracting or switching out until I have the weight I want and then it all goes into the big processing pot.

My very first cast boolits were poured from pewter. I almost got a hernia trying to cut the sprue because I let everything cool too long. Pretty boolits, though.

[redhawk0]

Lets do the math....and find a boolit that comes close to what you want.

7000 gr = 1 lb.

7000/16 (oz) = 437gr per oz.
7000/32(1/2 oz) = 218gr per oz.

So...if you want 1 oz ingot...find a mold that casts Lyman #2 in the 450 range (since tin is lighter than lead)
If you want a 1/2 oz ingot....find a mold that casts Lyman #2 in the 230 range.

I doubt you'll ever find a boolit mold that gets you exact...but boolit making isn't an exact science either.

my 2 cents.

redhawk

[Burnt Fingers]

I use a Do-It bank sinker mold. I already had it on hand and it works like a champ.

[kycrawler]

I use a bank sinker mold and cut the eye off with side cuts after they cool that way I don't use them fishing

[dbosman]

Keep your eyes open for an old Potter mold. It has a P in each cavity.

[Conditor22]

I thought the "P" stood for "Pure" my bad

[Jniedbalski]

I like my 44 lee bp mold for conical for my 1858 Remington . After I found out what a pain they are to load and not as accurate as round ball .this mold never gets used for my Remington any more so I use it. I use to use a deep long Handel metal spoon and heavy welding glove. I can’t find any Pewter any way any more around here so I have been using 50/50 solder.

[Wheelguns 1961]

This is a very timely thread for me as I have some tin and some pewter that needs to be melted into smaller portions. Lots of good ideas. I never thought of using a bullet mold. I have no imagination.

[Went2kck]

I just tip the mold up om one side and it only fills half of it and is at an angle so I know that it is pewter.

[Bazoo]

I have some of those mini muffin tins. If I ever get some pewter to melt I'll use those. I think it'd be easy enough to use a small dipper to get close on a specific weight, say a 45 auto case with a wire handle. Be a lot quicker than casting a mess of pewter bullets.

[kevin c]

At their respective melting points, molten tin weighs about 65% of the same volume of molten lead. If your source of tin is scrap food service pewter that's 92.5% tin, then the final weight of tin in a cast pewter slug is about 60% of the weight of the same slug cast from pure lead.

So I think that, while getting a nice round number might be hard, you can at least use boolit molds to get pewter into units of the same size and of predictable tin content.

[15meter]

I use a NOE mold I bought for a 450 Nitro Express at 480 grains that casts a great pewter boolit for sweetening the pot. Any big bore mold would probably do the trick. May try my 450 grain 50-70 mold next time. I've got 40+ lbs. of Good Will finds to reduce to a usable form.

[Conditor22]

I tried many of my molds until I found one that cast the pewter closest to 1/2 oz and went with that one

[Tripplebeards]

I use to melt mine in various slyicone molds from the hobby or baking stores and use a metal stamp to mark them pewter. Now I'm just lazy and weigh what ever pewter item I think will be close to the weight I need to match up to the percentage to my alloy mix. That way i don't melt my pewter into ignots anymore and accidentally mix them up with my lead ingots. I have been buying so much lately that some day I might pawn some it off in eBay and IMO someone would rather buy original stamped items instead of what might think is a mystery mix made into an ignot.