Melting Brass

[GregLaROCHE]

Does anyone here melt brass. I have access to a lot of 22lr brass and was wondering if I could do anything with it. What is the minimum I would have to invest to get started.
Thanks

[Sasquatch-1]

Look on YouTube. There are an incredible number of videos on building furnaces and casting metals.

[john.k]

You can easily melt brass in a small crucible with a gas /compressed air torch............or even one of the old torches that used gas and the low air pressure from a forge blower............you can also melt brass in a steel container ,but it will flash all over the steel,and that much will be lost..........if you melt a considerable quantity ,say 10 lbs+ ,then proper precautions need to be taken for the extreme heat involved.

[Electrod47]

You can sell it as is to a scrap buyer.

[Omega]

Unless you just want to melt them for a project, you can offer it up to someone to make 223 ammo with it.

[turtlezx]

members here could use it for making jacketed bullets list on swap & sell

[BJung]

Save it along with any other brass you can find and cast a bronze age sword.

[GregLaROCHE]

Save it along with any other brass you can find and cast a bronze age sword.

Now that sounds interesting.

[405grain]

I second the suggestion of putting it up for sale to the guys that do swaging. There are lots of people that use spent 22lr cases to make jackets for .224" bullets.

[Mal Paso]

India and Iran both got started in the decorative brass business due to a surplus of used cartridge brass.

[GregLaROCHE]

I second the suggestion of putting it up for sale to the guys that do swaging. There are lots of people that use spent 22lr cases to make jackets for .224" bullets.

I would consider that, but here in Europe, there aren’t many people swaging.

[GregLaROCHE]

India and Iran both got started in the decorative brass business due to a surplus of used cartridge brass.

I’ve been thinking about how much brass is on the ground now in Ukraine.

[armoredman]

Brass and steel - I think there will be a market for slightly used Soviet era armored vehicles soon...
As for melting brass, a buddy has a rocket forge he uses for that, but I haven't seen anything he has made with it.

[john.k]

.....they one time used to sell Soviet 22 ammo here ......the steel cases were so strong nothing short of a hammer blow would set them off.

[Bent Ramrod]

A friend had a furnace that ran on propane from a grill tank and ambient air. He used a graphite crucible of maybe a pint capacity to melt bronze for casting into medieval stuff (buckles, medals, fibulae, etc) for the people of his “Shire” in the Society For Creative Anachronism. It would take maybe 15-20 minutes to melt a charge from light-off of the furnace.

I showed up one afternoon to one of his casting parties with a paint can full of cartridge brass and a couple of wood patterns for small size machine shop accessories. The experiment was not a success. Twice the heating time that would make the bronze run like water only served to get the brass to a sluggish, slushy state, like lead just after it melts. It would pour out of the crucible like porridge, and I only got one usable casting out of it. He was nervous because the crucibles have a finite service life, depending on the heat and the number to times brought to temperature, and when a full crucible takes early retirement, you are glad of all that PPE you have on. They are not cheap, either. I had him dump the remaining brass, and thanked him for his trouble.

You might need a MAPP gas setup, or some oxygen in the mix, to melt cartridge brass enough for casting.

[andrew375]

Cartridge brass is no good for casting. Essentially brass (copper and zinc) alloys come in 2 classes, Alpha and Beta. Alpha brass has less than 37% zinc and is very malliable, which is why its used for cartridge cases, but (as you noted) doesn't cast very well. Beta brasses have more than 37% zinc, it's not very malliable but flow really well when molten. Spelter, the brass alloy used for brazing, is around 50/50 copper and zinc. This is also the alloy most used for casting ornaments such as horse brass and belt buckles.

So just take your brass to your local scrap yard, you'll get good money for it due to the fact that it is a known alloy.

[Walter Laich]

India and Iran both got started in the decorative brass business due to a surplus of used cartridge brass.

saw the same thing in RVN

[dikman]

I've been saving the brass bases from shotgun shells and tried melting some in my furnace, they didn't melt very well and I ended up with a powdery mass (much as bent ramrod found). If I melted "normal" brass first and then added the bases to that it worked but it's obviously "diluting" the normal brass. I'll keep saving them then just sell them as scrap.

[Plate plinker]

I have always wanted to cast a bell.

[hoodat]

My wife has used my oxygen-aceteylene torch to melt spent cartridges. She would put a few of them close together on a plate of steel, and melt them into a puddle. Made interesting shapes, with headstamps still readable. She then drilled a hole in a convenient spot and made key fobs from them. I've got one that is a dead ringer for the face of my bird dog.

My chick is handy -- and weird. jd

[john.k]

Old water taps and valves are a good source of brass.........I used to use old padlocks .....every tractor had a padlock on the toolbox,and we cut them off ........i showed the bossses grandkids how to cast brass with melted padlocks.

[john.k]

If you need more zinc in the cartridge brass,toss in some zinc wheelweights.

[405grain]

Two things: First, if cartridge brass doesn't have enough zinc in it to cast well... There's your use for those otherwise useless zinc tire weights!

Second: Several years ago when our military was heavily into both Afghanistan and Iraq I needed to go down to a Marine Corp base in the Southern California desert and have a deuce and a half transferred from Federal property to a state agency so that it could be used to recover highway construction materials from quarries and remote construction sites and bring tons of it back to material testing labs. After I picked out the truck I wanted (the one with the words "it runs" painted on the side), I was directed to meet with a lady that could sign my paperwork. She worked in one of four large warehouses over on the other side of the base. When I got there I went into a warehouse that was at lease 100 yards long and had three levels of shelves on both sides along it's whole length. All of these shelves were completely stacked full of heavy duty cardboard boxes about 4 feet square. There were hundreds of them, and they filled the entire warehouse. (I have no idea what was in the other three warehouses).

The lady that I needed to see had a small office on one end of the warehouse. I spoke with her and showed her my paperwork for transferring the truck. She looked my stuff over, then told me that she'd never done a transfer like this before, and would need to make a phone call to see it it was "authorized". While she was on the phone I waited outside her office. It was then that I noticed that someone had accidentally stabbed one of the boxes with a forklift while stacking them. Empty 50 caliber BMG brass was spilling a little bit out of the hole. After the lady finished her call she told me that everything was OK, and she started signing the forms. I asked her if all of those boxes were full of 50 caliber brass? She said yes. She told me that The Marine Corp sends it's empty brass back state side to prevent it from becoming a resource for our enemies. I said "That's amazing! There must be millions of rounds of brass out there!" That's when she told me that this was just this months supply. They get this much back every month.

[GregLaROCHE]

Cartridge brass is no good for casting. Essentially brass (copper and zinc) alloys come in 2 classes, Alpha and Beta. Alpha brass has less than 37% zinc and is very malliable, which is why its used for cartridge cases, but (as you noted) doesn't cast very well. Beta brasses have more than 37% zinc, it's not very malliable but flow really well when molten. Spelter, the brass alloy used for brazing, is around 50/50 copper and zinc. This is also the alloy most used for casting ornaments such as horse brass and belt buckles.

So just take your brass to your local scrap yard, you'll get good money for it due to the fact that it is a known alloy.

Couldn’t you just add zinc?

[dtknowles]

Instead of adding zinc, I am going to start with zinc and add the brass. I have a furnace and tried to melt brass but it did not get hot enough but I was shy about going to full power. I am setting up for another go and I am going to melt some zinc and add the brass to the crucible. I am going to start with a full bottle of propane and run the furnace at as big a blast and as lean a flame as I can get.

Tim

[ulav8r]

As mentioned on another recent thread, bronze is copper and tin. Same as brass, there are many variations of bronze also. Maybe cartridge brass mixed with tin and/or zinc would make a good casting. If you do not exactly duplicate a standard alloy, it doesn't matter so long as it casts well and is strong enough for what you are making, just don't try casting a cannon barrel to be used with live loads.

[Sasquatch-1]

Instead of adding zinc, I am going to start with zinc and add the brass. I have a furnace and tried to melt brass but it did not get hot enough but I was shy about going to full power. I am setting up for another go and I am going to melt some zinc and add the brass to the crucible. I am going to start with a full bottle of propane and run the furnace at as big a blast and as lean a flame as I can get.

Tim

You may want to keep a warm water bath for the propane tank in case it freezes up running at wide open.

[dtknowles]

You may want to keep a warm water bath for the propane tank in case it freezes up running at wide open.

Thanks

[dtknowles]

Zinc and blast test done. Mixed results. When I took the lid off the crucible the zinc that was not mixed in caught fire. Pretty and poisonous. I stirred it as best I could and then poured it into my mold (steel can). I got a pretty good brass disk, but it had inclusions because of a bunch of dross. I need more metal and not try to use it all so dross does not get into the mold.

Tim

[BLAHUT]

Cartridge brass is no good for casting. Essentially brass (copper and zinc) alloys come in 2 classes, Alpha and Beta. Alpha brass has less than 37% zinc and is very malliable, which is why its used for cartridge cases, but (as you noted) doesn't cast very well. Beta brasses have more than 37% zinc, it's not very malliable but flow really well when molten. Spelter, the brass alloy used for brazing, is around 50/50 copper and zinc. This is also the alloy most used for casting ornaments such as horse brass and belt buckles.

So just take your brass to your local scrap yard, you'll get good money for it due to the fact that it is a known alloy.

Could a person add zinc to the mix when melting to get a pour able brass mix for casting ??

[dtknowles]

I cast another brass ingot today. No zinc this time but a little lead and more brass than before. 20 minutes in the furnace and it was ready to pour. It was runny enough, but I still got some inclusions. Maybe I need to flux it.

Tim

[john.k]

Yes,any ammount of zinc can be added..........the cheapest brasses are down to around 5% copper .........the zinc also fluxes the melt,and is a useful way of using zinc wheel weights.

[john.k]

The big 4ft square boxes full of fired brass.......while ago I was at the scrapyard ,and inside the shed was some of the big cardboard 4ft boxes full of fired 9mm (near as I could tell)......anyhoo,young feller with me was obviously going to accidentally souvineer some of the brass from an open box........I said dont even think about it.........there is cameras everywhere.

[dtknowles]

Yes,any ammount of zinc can be added..........the cheapest brasses are down to around 5% copper .........the zinc also fluxes the melt,and is a useful way of using zinc wheel weights.

how to keep the zinc from burning?