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