Zinc In My pewter,Help!!

[WideAwake]

Howdy Men, Well I was doing a Pewter melt & My son dropped a Belt buckle I was wanting to melt seperately from the Marked Items. and sure enough it looks like Zinc to me!!!! Doesn't have the Gold tone. it was about a 180gram buckle in a pot of 400grams of marked pewter. So am I screwed? anyway to remove the Zinc from the Pewter?

Also, I have had some items marked Solid pewter that didn't have the gold Tone.
Anyone else found this? it's mostly On Older Pewter items...

Thanks In Advance!!

[Rangefinder]

Might try the zinc removal technique in the sticky above--2nd one from the top. Can't say I've ever tried it personally, but if it saves your pewter, it's worth a shot.

[lwknight]

400 grams of 95% tin can't be worth more than $12.00
I guess hobby time aint worth much and especially so when you use it as a reason to get out of the house when the wife wants to watch dancing stars or something like that.

[a.squibload]

Disclaimer: I haven't melted any pewter yet.

Being mostly tin it should melt at a much lower temperature than zinc.
How hot was the pot running? (Low, medium, Halls of Hades?)
Did the buckle float for a while?

Should drop the items on the concrete first, you will know if it's zinc by the ding noise.
And there's a zinc test with citric acid, Sagacious posted it, easy to do.

If it's still pretty soft when it cools you should be OK, I guess.
As I understand zinc would make lead alloy slushy and hard to pour,
probably same for pewter.

Maybe someone with more experience will help here, hope your melt didn't get contaminated!

[sagacious]

Being mostly tin it should melt at a much lower temperature than zinc.
How hot was the pot running? (Low, medium, Halls of Hades?)
Did the buckle float for a while?
The comment about pot temperature is a very good one. Pewter should be kept at not much above it's melting point, and the melting point of most zinc alloys is considerably higher than that. Keep your pot temp low enough that zinc items will not melt.

I am not aware of any way to remove the zinc from your melt. There may not be enough Zn in there to cause a problem when you alloy with Pb. This is one of those try-and-see situations. Good luck.