Melting Tin Cans?

[Steel185]

in the search to stock pile more lead and alloy materials I was thinking i might need more tin in the future to harden my pure lead and some of my WWs. Is it even feasable to melt down tin cans and have them ready to add to the mix when needed. Are Tin cans pure tin? i ask becuase i have acess to vertualy unlimited tin cans right now.

[Freightman]

Only the solder line is tin! most cans today are extruded in a seamless can with no tin as solder (tin). Even the cheap cans use a plastic coating on the metal instead of tin economics tin is way to high.

[littlejack]

Go to the local Good Will or the St Vincent De Pauls and look for pewter.
When you find some and the price is too high, Hide it somewere on the shelf and come back when the color code has been changed to the tag on the pewter item.
I was born at night, but it wasn't LAST night.
Jack
P.S. I have about 30-40 pounds of pewter cast in nice little ingots.

[Steel185]

i didn't know that, I'll look for pewter. thanks

[StarMetal]

Tin cans haven't been tin for quite some time. The last thing I remember that were made of tin were squeeze tubes, like toothpaste, gunslick grease lube, etc.. Today toothpaste tubes are aluminum plastic coated and other squeeze tubes are merely plastic.

In my opinion tin is the least of the alloys you need. If you are making alloy from scratch and none of the ingredients have tin in them...then you can use "a little tin". Don't let anyone tell you that you need more then 1-2 % tin in your mix.

[fryboy]

ummm for grins can we watch u try to smelt them ? ( make a video !!! ) tin tin cans are indeed rare years ago i thought the ammo crate i got was lined with tin .....it mite of been ....acted like it ( i since learned the bend it and listen to the tin cry trick ) so i smelted it down ....nope no thermometer back then ...melted poured ingots ,looked fairly sweet ,had a alloy that wasnt filling out good even with a lil extra heat so i dropped the smallest one in it ( about 3/8 oz.) that was one of the biggest mistakes of my casting career.....still not sure what that stuff was took days to get the dregs and wash out of my pot ,fillout went from bad to worse and it gave everything the funniest tinge ....years past ... got some corrosive old turk 8mm in bandoleers...wow those buttons look like tin ( not much in them but it adds up ) recalling my past experience i put them in a tuna can on the stove ,they melted ..hmmmm add a lil lead flux and poured into a coupla sinker molds...bad fill out hmmmm what the heck [shrugz] i since learned alot more ( some the hard way ) tin helps the fillout adds just a wee bit to the hardness but it also lets the boolit age soften ,pewter is good !!!! ( i wouldnt mind havin a bunch but only for cheap at garbage sales and marked down at the dav's and salvation army's ,i also check the worth of the piece before i melt it and bent broken pieces are best ,alot of belt buckles were made of pewter but also alot were made with pewter looking alloys if it doesnt say it's always best to test it and be leery of it

[wistlepig1]

A few months ago I got some pewter form a second hand shop from the shevle that was marked "pewter". Well to make along story short it wasn't and it tested out to be magnesum (sp). Be very carefull with pewter from unknown sources. Learn from my mistake, if it's not marked as pewter --pass.

[dnepr]

Yup tin cans are really steel these days, I had a buddy really confused when I was melting aluminum in " tin cans"