Best practices for scrapping pewter?

[NavyGuns45]

I bought my first piece of pewter today at a thrift shop with the intent of melting down to add to lead alloy. I saw the Pewter ID sticky, but wanted to check and see if folks have proven methods (equipment set ups) for melting down the pewter, what to cast it into for small-ish ingots to weigh out for alloying, etc.

[Winger Ed.]

I just smash it down small enough to drop into the pot.

I have a old Lee ingot mold that makes the two each one and 1/2 pound ingots. It works fine.
Other times, I feed the piece into the pot as I need it without melting it down first.

Something else that's tin and ya see here & there is the old style home caning lid rings.
They look the same as our new steel ones we get at the grocery store, but are dull, gray, and usually bent up.
I drop them straight into the pot.

[lightman]

I don't find much Pewter but I use a smaller pot to melt solder and Pewter in than I use for scrap lead. I'll stir it a lot and flux a couple of times with beeswax. Then I'll pour them into the 2 smaller cavities that are in a Lee ingot mold.

I've been casting long enough that I have a couple of different size pots and a set of tools matched to each of them.

[Conditor22]

I also smelt pewter in a smaller SS pot fluxing with both Pine sawdust and wax, then I pour the pewter into a small casting pot (lee production) and cast it all into .5 oz boolits.
This is the mold I found first that works many other molds may work. .5 oz. is a great size for "sweetening" the pot or alloying :)

https://i.imgur.com/HkTjUPQ.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/WPmtSzM.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/H8sDFJC.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/K6Wcpe5.jpg

[JM7.7x58]

I use a muffin pan to make pewter coins. I use a small ladle and they are pretty consistent on weight

[pjames32]

I use my 45/70 mold 480gr and a small muffin tin for 2oz.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

I prop the handle up on my Lyman mold and ladle out small amounts to make little wedge shaped ingots. If you have a 10 pound pot and want to add about 2% tin that's only 4 ounces or so of pewter.

[Bazoo]

I been known to weigh a pewter ingot and add it to the pot to get exactly what I want. Been known to stick the edge of a pewter item in the melt and add an unknown amount too. Just pends on what I got, and how particular I am about what I'm casting.

In one of the old books, I think Phil Sharps book, he talks about pouring small coins directly onto the concrete floor, no mold needed.

[TyGuy]

I guess the molten pewter temp is low enough that concrete doesn’t pop? I’ve seen molten aluminum pop concrete but that is MUCH higher temp.

[William Yanda]

Pewter will melt on a hotplate, but it melts faster on a turkey fryer. I melt in a ss skillet, flux and cast in a couple of 6 cavity Potter ingot molds that I got from a member here. The ingots are marked with a cast in P, about 3 inches long, 4 or 5 to the pound. One of these is just right for a 4-20 potful of alloy for me. One reason I like them is that they stack well in the USPS SFRB. Others have cast in bullet molds.

[jsizemore]

1/8-1/4" depth in the bottom of a mini muffin tin works great.

[kevin c]

I've heard that some use a casting pot, but the larger pieces won't fit into a 4" to 5" diameter version without putting effort into cutting or bending them a lot. I use an 11" SS pot over the propane burner I process lead with, turned down low.

Curb stomping plates and platters bends them enough to fit. A weed burner played over the top melts down items a lot faster than just heat from below, though once there's a pool of liquid metal, it goes a lot faster. A trick to fast melting is to get molten metal inside the cup/bowl/pot. Otherwise such items tend to float with only a small area in contact with the melt. Of course, your items all need to be bone dry; while the temps are lower than with lead, the tinsel fairy can still pay you an unpleasant visit.

Some pewter items have attached wooden knobs and handles. These don't need to be removed; the pewter will melt off and, while the wood might char a bit at 500 or so degrees, it usually doesn't burn and you can pick it out with pliers. Plastic, though is a different story; try not to get any into the melt to avoid melting or burning.

I've experienced a fair bit of dross, though it seems to be tin oxides that reduce readily with sawdust and paraffin wax. It reforms quickly, though, so a cover layer and/or a bottom pour ladle may be in order.

I've made the mini muffin tin coins, but am moving mainly to small bar ingots since I make casting alloy in 240-250# batches.

[GhostHawk]

I was lucky when I found mine, I had a clean 4 lb dipper pot sitting on the shelf (Upgraded to 20 lb magnum melter)

About half the batch got cast into Lee 310 gr .430 boolits. The other half got dropped into a muffin tin to make "coins" About 2/3rds of a ladle gave me the thickness I wanted. A tin snips cleaned up any splashes up on the sides to get remelted.

Would love to find another batch at the second hand store. That batch was 6.5 lbs usable pewter for 11$. Happy camper for sure.
Took momma out for supper for that find for sure.

[imashooter2]

I sold 6-700 pounds of Pewter on this board before everyone decided to scrounge for themselves. :drinks:

In my experience, the best tools for getting pewter ready for the pot are a bench vise and a 3 pound drilling hammer. For bowls, pots and vases, grab handles and bases in the vise and twist them off. Then use the hammer to crush the body into a small diameter tube as required. For plates and trays, clamp a few inches in the vise and bend it 90 degrees. Fold flat with the hammer. Repeat. Then feed the long tubes into the pot of your choice as they melt. Too much effort trying to make it into small pieces.

I like a Potter mold for ingots. They have a nice P on them for easy identification and the P makes a convenient snap line for smaller additions to your alloy.

http://imashooter2.com/pictures/potter107.jpg
http://imashooter2.com/sell/pewz1.jpg

[beechbum444]

Can not believe I never thought of pouring pewter into a bullet mold so it is the same weight ����

[GhostHawk]

Well it will be lighter, but makes it easy to drop one or two into a pot when you want just a bit more hardness/shiny.

[Bazoo]

Sounds like a lot of extra work, casting pewter bullets.

[NavyGuns45]

So pewter's ~2/3 the density of lead, my .600" round ball mold that would cast 324 grains in lead should be right at a half ounce in pewter. Good idea.

[Tim357]

Also, the bottom of an aluminum can makes nice coins to save pewter. Take six of them, tape them together and turn upside down. Fill with molten pewter. I disremember what they weigh, but they are handy.

[imashooter2]

A Lyman dipper is pretty consistent at about 2 ounces. It’s a rare pour that isn’t within 2 tenths.

[MrWolf]

Also, the bottom of an aluminum can makes nice coins to save pewter. Take six of them, tape them together and turn upside down. Fill with molten pewter. I disremember what they weigh, but they are handy.

That is what I did. Easily identified but I never found enough pewter. As a matter of fact I have only found it once while in Florida at a flea market. Have never seen any in NJ or out here the last 4 years.

[beezapilot]

Excellent and timely post- I'm gearing up to melt quite a lot of pewter and rolls of solder to clean up the barn a bit. Loved the idea of fairly precision casted ingots of pewter/solder/tin. In as much just bought a Do-It fishing sinker mould with a variety of cavities that cast 1-2-3-4 oz "cannon-ball" sinkers. At 10 OZ per pour that should make short work of it and give me set increments for smelting / casting.

As an unrelated side note, the fishing supply house that I ordered it from had a nice inventory of Lee Bottom Pour pots that seem to be getting hard to find in the "shooting" arena.

[kevin c]

Beezapilot, as posted above pewter is about 2/3 the density of lead so what you'll get out of the mold will be lighter than lead balls out of the same mold.

And my personal experience makes me also advise that you cut sooner rather than later if you're pouring through a sprue plate: that stuff sets up REALLY hard.

[Big Dipper]

I smelt in an apropriate sized pot and pour into duck decoy strap weights. They are easy to snip to whatever size is needed.

[gbrown]

I did scrounge for pewter a few years back. Now that I have 50+ pounds of it, I stopped. I use it along with solder to make my rifle alloy, around 20 BHN. Use the alloy calculator off this site. Push those puppies hard, work fine, no problems. Pistols? Straight coww. Plenty hard enough. IMHO. Read Fryxell's article. To me, he seems to advocate softer loads for most pistol. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, don't think so.

[509thsfs]

I wait until I fill a 5 gal bucket then melt it down into small ingots when I do my lead ingots. usually 2 times a year. Normally have between 15-20 lbs each melt

[kevin c]

Oh, another heads up for new pewter scroungers: think twice about buying candlesticks that are marked "weighted", even though they might be also marked as pewter. A lot of the heft of such a candlestick is a non pewter filler in the base to make it stable. Sometimes the base is only a very thin shell over what some charitably describe as camel doo doo. It's a real disappointment to think you have a score only to find that the amount of pewter gained is a fraction of the weight. It's a worse disappointment to make a mess in your pot when that stuff melts and gums up everything (it doesn't burn up).

If you're unlucky enough to see this stuff on top of your melt, I found it helps to dump in a generous amount of sawdust to bind it up before it coats the walls of your pot. Don't let the sawdust burn or char; scoop it out with the filler, adding more as necessary. Expect to have to use a wire brush on the spoon you scooped with (DON'T use your nice bottom pour ladle to scoop out the mess), and maybe on the pot too. Ugh, I only had it happen once and don't ever want a repeat performance.