I bought an ingot of tin. How do I get 200 grains from it?

[bbogue1]

I bought a chunk of pewter 96% tin. I want to add 261 grains to my COWW to make 2 pounds of cast alloy. I really do not want to hack saw the ingot. I am thinking of melting it in my Lee Pro-4 bottom pour pot and pouring it into an 8X8 pan making a thinner sheet that I can cut with tin snips. How do you do it? I do not smelt in my pour pot. Do I need to ultra clean my pot? Or should I have a separate tin melting pot? Suggestions?

2 days later I heated the tin with a propane torch then dripped the drops onto the aluminum top of my table saw. After covering the top with drips I scooped them up and chose a few to weigh. Sure enough I was able to mix and match to get 261 grains.212851 212852 Thanks for the suggestion Quail4Jake

I gathered them up and put them on a scale till then added drips until the group weighed 261 +- 1 grain Dumped them in a snack size plastic bag.
My muffin ingots of COWW average 2 pounds each so all I have to do grab an ingot and a bag and put them both into the pot at the same time. Thanks for the suggestions, there are more I want to try.

[jcren]

Cast big bullets from it. Weigh em and add accordingly.

[Handloader109]

One large bullet's worth.
I'd get me a small propane torch, One of those little pencil or a larger hand held for cooking (making those burn top deserts and Yes, I've borrowed my daughter's before.)
and then have your pan and heat a corner of the tin over the pan.
Dribble into the pan and stop once you think you have your 261 grains in the pan. If you have scale you can use for this, you could get exact.

[Handloader109]

Cast big bullets from it. Weigh em and add accordingly.

That works if you have extra empty pot. Mine never gets empty.....

[JSnover]

Cast big bullets from it. Weigh em and add accordingly.

That's how I do it. Melting a big hunk o' tin in your Pro 4 or any other pot won't hurt a thing

[country gent]

A 300 grn bullet would probably get you very close to 260 grns cast from tin / pewter. If you have drill press use a 3/8" or 1/2" drill place a towel o the table and then the ingot and drill into it collecting the chips and weigh to the 260 grns you want on your reloading scales. Run the drill at the slowest setting to reduce throwing the chips around off the towel.

You can melt it and pour into smaller thinner ingots easy enough. A pan to hold it and a burner. A small piece of channel iron 1" -1 1/2" wide works well here. cut it 12"-18" long and block ends. set on blocks and level it pretty close. A scribe line at the thickness you want. Ladle or pour tin to this mark and let cool. Leveling the ingot mould keeps the ingot close to the same thickness its length. With this size ingot poure 1/4" thick a chisel can be used to cut the end off once done a few times the length needed will be known. IE 1/2" of ingot = xxx grains.

With the chisel and a hammer you can peel small pieces off the existing ingot also weighing them to desired amount.

[jcourson]

Lots of ways to go about it. As mentioned, empty your pot and melt it down.
I don't use my bullet molds for tin/pewter, though it would make for a convenient way to have small, uniform amounts. I don't want to grab them by mistake. I have considered purchasing a round ball mold just for pewter.

Currently, I use a mini miffin pan to pour thin disks like poker chips.

You can always make a ton of 'drips' at the the end to fine tune your weight.

[JSnover]

An easy way to keep tin boolits separated is to use a "junk" mold of a size or type that you never load. Another member gave a damaged .54 ML mold. Cast a pile of them and keep them in a coffee can. They weight pretty near an ounce so the math is simple.

[JBinMN]

I am thinking that if ya wanted to make it into a thinner sheet, you could just form up a "tray" made of alum. foil inside another tray/pan & then take a propane torch & just melt it down and just stop when ya have a "sheet" spread out at the thickness you desire.

Cheap & easy & that is likely how I would do it. The alumin. foil is not gonna melt at the temps that pewter /tin melts so there would be no issue there & I do not think that they would stick to one another as well. Although if that is a concern, just try a small amount melted off first to test.

Anyway, I like to try to keep things simple & that is why I suggest what I did.

G'Luck & please let folks know what ya try to do & what works & what doesn't.

:)

P.S. - If I get a roundtuit later I will go out & test this myself, just to see how it works. Maybe take some pics if it does.
;)

Once again, G'Luck!
:)

[RogerDat]

Lee round ball mold will run you less than $20 from Titan Reloading. Myself I use the mini muffin / candy pans and pour solder coins, much as prev. post said they pour "poker chips". Small pan, hot plate or camp stove. Melt and pour into angle iron resting corner down. Long thin wire in the shape of a "V" will result.

I might mention there are advantages to making larger batches of alloy. Consistency is a big one. Much more likely to have a single 100# pot of alloy all cast the same than 5 pots at 20 lbs. Small batches are good for testing but bigger batches of melting pot size ingots are better for consistent casting and results.

[lwknight]

Make pop corn out of it. Hold the bar over water with a little soap or cooking oil on/in it. Melt it off with a plumbers torch into the water. You will get a lot of tear shaped drops and some popcorn. then you can easily weigh up what you want.
Be sure it is dry before adding to a melted pot though.

[fredj338]

Cast big bullets from it. Weigh em and add accordingly.

Agree, 200gr is not much. If adding 1% to 18# of alloy, that is 2.75oz. So I would melt it into a small cast iron pot & pour it roughly into the largest bullet mold you have, doesn;t need to be pretty.

[John Boy]

* Buy a strap anchor decoy mold ... https://store.do-itmolds.com/Decoy-AnchorbrSz-StrapbrSz-6_p_704.html
* Melt the tin down in a clean pot
* Pour the melt into the strap anchor mold
Now you have long strips of tin that you can cut & weigh to exact weight with a pair of tin snips

[CraigOK]

a lot of good ideas. You could use your smelting set up also to liquefy it and dump it into any of the above suggestions

[quail4jake]

I hold the ingot and melt off the end with a torch drip it on the concrete floor (close to the floor) then scrape up the little wafers. Do you really only want to make 2 lb of alloy? I would be concerned about what the other 4% is in that pewter, you may wind up with an alloy that's harder than you anticipated...

[Skooterr]

Has anyone drilled/milled a mold out to whatever size they were shooting for?
I seen where someone was using a 50 cal mini to get near 1/2 an ounce, got me thinking one could take an old smaller mold, .309, .358, etc. drill it out, checking as you go til you hit your desired weight. Maybe get a Lee six cav. drill out 1 or 2 leaving the rest in case it didn't work out. Might not be pretty, but that shouldn't matter.
Anyone done this?

[bbogue1]

Tried melting the corner with a propane torch. All I had was a propane lighter. Wasn't long before the ingot was hot so I grabbed it with pliers. then it wasn't long before the lighter was excessively hot not to mention my fingers. Got a propane torch, but, the last time I used it then turned it off the propane leaked out overnight. I oiled the cork gasket which will help, I believe. Tomorrow I'll try again.

[GhostHawk]

My pewter score (6.5 lbs for 11$) I cleaned my old Lee 4 pound dipper pot and dedicated it to just pewter/lino.

I also had a muffin tin, older steel one, no teflon.

So I ladled out thin "coins" for roughly 2/3rds of it.

Some went into my .430 310 gr mold. I keep those in a seperate container next to the coins.

If I need a specific amount I can weigh a coin, and grab a tin snips and whittle until I am there.

Or drop in a slug and call it good.

Both work.

Tin melts pretty easy, for a small stainless pot from the second hand store and a gas stove would work.

[MaryB]

I cast into 1 and 2 oz sinker molds(use the same molds to cast zinc sinkers for river fishing, lose a lot of tackle!)

[ABJ]

I bought the Lee 4 lb melter just for tin. I use different size steel measuring spoons and pour into an old cast pan and make little dime to quarter size wafers. weigh on the reloading scale. With a little practice the wafers come out the same weight.
Tony

[F_L]

I use a propane torch to drip my pewter into the pan of my powder scale. Once it tips at 500 grains, I empty it and refill. I have a ziplock full of 500 grain chunks of pewter.

[RogerDat]

One thing that I think is important is making darn sure the form of your pewter or solder is distinctive. For example I wouldn't use a Lee ingot mold unless I used it to make thin 1/8 deep ingots. You don't want to accidentally be throwing in 1# ingots you thought were lead that turn out to be pewter or solder. Can't get that tin back out of the alloy after it melts. I would spend the few bucks to have a mold you know is distinctive for tin, bet that duck decoy weight, coins, drips, thin ingots, or a bullet mold you don't reload for. Would stink to realize you just loaded 200 45 ACP with 100% pewter bullets, stink even more if you realized it after sending a bunch of them down range.

[RCE1]

Instead of trying to precisely measure the tin, I would always start with the tin and figure out how much lead I needed to add to hit my ratio. Seemed easier that way, since the amounts of lead are so much more than the tin. I would buy it in big ingots from a guy I used to know, then I'd melt them down and cast partial ingots in my own moulds. Some were heavy and some lighter. I worked for me, having a variety of weights I could combine to get close to what I wanted.

Seems two pounds of alloy is a pretty small amount, unless you just wanted a little bit to test something...

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

The first batch of Tin I acquired (from a member here), was lead-free solder (99.xx % tin), I melted the large ingots into my cleaned out casting pot, and poured some 250gr Lee REAL boolits, I also kept all the sprues, and I tried to pour different size sprues, so I had a varied batch of sizes.

Since then, I have used regular ingot molds and pour very thin ingots that are easily cut-able.

[Grmps]

YMMV depending on the weight of your pewter.
I smelted/fluxed/cast different boolits with pewter until I got close to .003 grns of 1/2 oz

https://i.imgur.com/Ffx487d.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Axvvj8Z.jpg

1 batch easy alloy boolits

https://i.imgur.com/sBHzgek.jpg

[Mr_Sheesh]

If you're drilling & want to keep the chips under control, try a plastic bowl or tupperware (translucent is best), cut a hole thru the bottom, then drill away. You can see what you're doing & it keeps the results pretty well under control. Beats the older way I did it with a {clean LOL} toilet paper roll :P

[Steppapajon]

I made a mold that cast a 1.6 oz ingot. just about right for 5 lbs.212819

[Skooterr]

Nice. How did you make the mold for them?

[Steppapajon]

I used a 5/8" ball nose end mill bit to cut a slot in a 1"x1" piece of aluminum. Did the math to determine the length. Tapped a hole in the end and screwed a handle on it. 212845
212892
SPJ

[bangerjim]

I use the small cavities in the standard LEE mold. I fill them 1/2 full and then just hold them with pliers and melt what I need into the casting pot. Melt only the amount I want off and save the rest for another batch.

Don't get hung up on the EXACT % Sn content. This whole thing is just a hobby and we use a lot of guesstimates. I use the amount of Sn that gives me good cast boolits. I have no idea on what the exact % is.......probably around 1% I guess. They all cast beautifully!

[parkerhale1200]

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?351903-sand-casting

[parkerhale1200]

I had the same problem, but i just take a different pan, and melted a 50 pound bar of pewter.
I put beer cans upside down in a box, and i had perfect 0,2 pound round pewter medallions.

212906
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[lightman]

[QUOTE=bangerjim;4272972]I use the small cavities in the standard LEE mold. I fill them 1/2 full and then just hold them with pliers and melt what I need into the casting pot. Melt only the amount I want off and save the rest for another batch.

This is what I did the last time that I melted a bunch of odd solder rolls.

[kycrawler]

I work in a shop that does radiator repair. When I first started working there. I got 11 5 gal buckets of solder drippings. I smelled it all down and cast it in fishing sinker molds I then cut the eye off the sinkers so I wouldn't end up using them fishing. Now I ended up getting an egg sinker mold and I just cast them without the center rod. So there's no hole in the middle

[mazo kid]

I used a 5/8" ball nose end mill bit to cut a slot in a 1"x1" piece of aluminum. Did the math to determine the length. Tapped a hole in the end and screwed a handle on it. 212845
212892
SPJ
You could use that same method to form a trough in a piece of scrap hardwood. Lining the trough with aluminum foil might make it easier to get the ingot out.