Pewter smelting and ingots

[cheese1566]

So I have accumulated pewter items from local thrift shops and at the point of smelting it down to practical form to use in my alloys.

What are you guys using for ingot molds?

I was thinking of using my 6 cavity 44 pistol mold to make slugs. Weighing them afterwards to make necessary calculations for alloys.

[Sasquatch-1]

I use the corncob cornbread mold. When I start having problems with fill out, I melt about half a cob in my 20# pot. I am not serious about my alloys since all of my shooting is handgun and less then 50 yards.

[WRideout]

I have used a Lyman 311284 mold for pewter. Any more, I only use half a tin "boolit" for one pot of lead in my Lee dipper furnace. Lee warns about melting pure tin in their pots, but I haven't really had a problem. If you find it hard to cut the sprue, just leave the cutter to the side and fill the mold to the top by eye.

Wayne

[Dusty Bannister]

An "open" mold might be a lot faster. A cardboard beer flat full of inverted beverage cans and then secured so they will not tip in use. A small pour in the rounded bottom of the inverted can makes a very nice "coin" and will be different than any alloy ingot mold you may already have on hand. pour a range of sizes so you can mix or match for the desired weight of Pewter you want.

[hunter74]

I use muffin pans. Makes good "coins"

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[KenH]

I've used a 500 grain 50 cal mold - makes a nice 1 oz bullet to drop in pot - well, not much over an oz anyway.

[oley55]

I too cast my pewter into 44mag bullets using either an RCBS 44-245-KT iron mold or an old discontinued LEE 90343 (429-255-SWC). I prefer using the old Lee because is cast a pretty consistent 200gr pewter bullet, while the 245gr KT casts at 188gr in pewter. My rectangular muffin molds create a 3 pound ingot and a couple of 44mag pewter bullets go in the pot with each giving me a bit less than 2% pewter/tin. Easy peasy and no need to break out the scales and calculator every time. Close is good enough for what I do.

I wonder how easy/hard it will be to cut the sprue on a six banger mold though. I assume it is aluminum. If it's brass I would wonder/worry about accidental tinning. Just something to think about. The suggestions above about removing or sliding the sprue cutter out of the way is probably a good idea.

[imashooter2]

I use Potter molds and cast a Lyman dipper full which goes just about 2 ounces. I like that the bottom of the P loop is about dead center and I can snap the ingots off with a pair of pliers for smaller additions. Some use the small cavities in the Lee ingot molds the same way. Many cast bullets, balls or sinkers and at least one member uses the bottoms of beverage cans to cast coins.

Eye candy…

[contender1]

Initially,, I used my big smelting pot to take my thrift store finds & reduce them to normal ingots. Then,, I take those ingots,, and calculate the amount of lead I'm going to smelt,, and the approximate amount of pewter I'll need to make my alloy. I them make up my "bullet alloy" on larger batches, ready to be put into my casting furnace.
But for smaller amounts,, old bullet molds, bottoms of cans, or many other small items can be used to cast smaller pieces for fine tuning an alloy.

[jsizemore]

I've got some mini muffin pans. I pour an 1/8-1/4" in the bottom of each. Weights vary from 1-4 ounces. I weigh them on a digital postage scale and put the weight of each on the flat surface with a sharpie. I weigh the alloy combo and pick the right pewter ingot/s combo to put in the casting pot.

[kevin c]

It helps to know how you add tin/pewter to your alloy.

If you need 4-5# of tin for 240# batches of casting alloy the way I do, Redneck Gold ingots of about 1 1/4 pounds plus coins of 1 to 3 oz., made in mini cupcake tins, do the job. If you just want to sweeten a pot’s worth of alloy, casting uniform pellets in a boolit mold is just about ideal (just keep them separate and well marked: loading and shooting them would be a horrible waste).

[Rockindaddy]

It's a shame to use pewter for making cast bullets. Pewter has silver and tin in it's composition. I try to save it for making pewter end caps for Sharps rifle fore end caps. Usually the joints in lead pipe consists of tin as it has a lower melting point than lead. Bar solder works good too as most bars are marked as to how much tin to lead is present. Don't know about silver bullets other than the fact that the Lone Ranger shot silver bullets!!!!

[fredj338]

I dont melt pewter but have gotten really big ingots of lino. I remelt & cast into small 1# ingots. For pewter, the 1# 4cav molds by Lyman, RCBS or Saeco, even Lee, would work great. Just fill them half full for useful size ingots.

[Land Owner]

I use ~6" long angle iron welded from bed rail as an ingot mold that when full is about 3#'s of alloy. By eye, I dribble a mold to about 1/4 full of pewter. Then I mark each ~0.75# sliver with its parent composition. I "do math" so clipping off a weighted piece of pewter, for a 49-49-2 percent proportion, is not an issue for me. Also, I am plinking and near-field target shooting mostly, so close-to-the-pin alloy composition is good enough.

[kevin c]

…Pewter has silver and tin in its composition…

Tin, yes, 90+% in most forms. Other than the occasional silver plated pewter item, though, I hadn’t heard of significant silver content in pewter alloys. AAMOF, I kind of thought it was used as “the poor man’s silver”.

[William Yanda]

I was fortunate to find a member here who had two Potter ingot molds, 6 rectangular cavities each, with a P on the bottom. Filled appropriately, they run 4 per lb.
Biggest problem is keeping them level while casting.

[William Yanda]

It's a shame to use pewter for making cast bullets. Pewter has silver and tin in it's composition. I try to save it for making pewter end caps for Sharps rifle fore end caps. Usually the joints in lead pipe consists of tin as it has a lower melting point than lead. Bar solder works good too as most bars are marked as to how much tin to lead is present. Don't know about silver bullets other than the fact that the Lone Ranger shot silver bullets!!!!

There are multiple formulas for pewter, I am not aware of any that contain silver. Most contain over 90% Sn. Check Rotometals offerings for the more common ingredients.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

The first batch of recovered Lead-Free solder I acquired many years, maybe 8 lbs or so?
I cast those into "ingots" using a Lee 50 cal 250gr REAL mold, and then also saved all the sprues...all for precise measuring.
Funny thing is, I almost never use those, I think I have near the same 8lbs of it, in a box somewhere.
.
Since then, when I've acquired scrap tin/pewter that's kind of unknown, but close to mostly Tin, I've used the Lee ingot mold, just the smaller 1/2 lb ingots, then only fill them half full, so the ingots are about the size of a pencil. Those work great and are easy to cut if needed.

[lightman]

Pewter is hard for me to find but I do run across solder. When I get enough I melt it all down. I use the small cavities in a Lee ingot mold for this.

[imashooter2]

Hardening pewter with silver doesn’t make a lot of sense when you compare the cost to copper and antimony. I’m sure someone somewhere has used silver, but it wasn’t one of the big manufacturers of hollowware.