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Bloodman14
10-25-2011, 09:03 PM
Guys, I did a search on this and came up dry; I smelted down some garage sale pewter a few weeks ago, and when I went to make up some alloy, I found that the entire batch of ingots had a gold hue to them. What would cause this? What pewter alloy do I have? Do I carry on?
Thanks.
onesonek
10-25-2011, 09:53 PM
Some pewter may have a percentage of copper in it. This will give it that appearence.
BAGTIC
10-25-2011, 10:59 PM
There are a lot of "pewter" alloys. Some contain lead, some don't. Same with copper. Amount of tin varies. Saying "pewter" is about as specific as saying metal.
Defcon-One
10-26-2011, 01:42 AM
Pure Tin will often have a Gold or Yellow tint to it. Pewter is usually 92%+ Tin, so that may be part of it.

Copper is another possibilty, but there's probably not enough to cause problems once it is alloyed with WW or pure lead at 2-5% Tin.

Do some testing using a small lot (5-10 lbs. max) and see how it casts! It will probably be OK.
evan price
10-26-2011, 04:40 AM
You may also have cast it into ingots at too high a temperature which can cause a straw colour to the metal.
NHGrumpyGramps
10-26-2011, 05:33 AM
I also think it is due to too high a temperature when you melted it down. I had a few pieces of pewter that I want to melt down and didn't want to take time to setup my lead furnace so melted them using an acetylene torch in cast iron pot. Didn't take long to melt but it got very hot quickly. The ingots had a gold hue to them. I remelted and cast them again later and the color turned out to be the normal silver color
Bloodman14
10-26-2011, 04:29 PM
O.K., sounds good. Thanks, gang.
lwknight
10-28-2011, 08:36 PM
You might not have gotten it too hot but the slow cooling will get a noticeable straw hue to it.
If you pour it into a cold mold and it coold quickly , it might stay silvery looking better.
Anyway , it really don't matter about the color. Its just oxides of tin.
arjacobson
10-30-2011, 08:01 PM
Mine usually has a straw color to it. I basically use a propane torch to melt it in a large cast iron ladle. I use a pop can turned upside down for my ingot mold. Makes nice ingots and you get the pewter very clean this way. Just keep the heat on the pewter while melting. When the ladle is ready you can pour off the pewter and leave the junk behind in the ladle. Great way to do small batches.