Metal Casting Zone

Hi everyone. I am new to this site and I didn’t see a copper melting section so I decided to post this in the brass section. I have been throwing around the idea for a while now to melt some mixed copper and make ingots out of it. I have roughly 100lbs of scrap copper that has lead/tin solder joints. I have already melted down the raw copper sections but I was wondering if there was a way to separate the metals in the melting process? From what I have read, the copper and the lead/tin will combine when melted. Any help is appreciated.

I dont know how to separate it out but if you melt it you would probably make a nice naval bronze. Welcome to the forum! Are you just making ignots or do you have plans to cast parts? If so we would love to know what your working on

For now I am just experimenting and making ingots. In the future I may make some molds and cast some artwork or something but I don’t really have any major plans right now.

Ive melted copper as well, your just a few degrees away from Iron
must have a pretty good furnace going there....
now we just have to get you hooked into building something that tickles your fancy,
hmm where's XL when you need him....

Hi Aonemarine. I’m only 23 but my father has been interested in melting metals and making artwork his whole life as a side hobby. We have a few furnaces and we are in the middle of making a coke fired cupola to melt iron. It should be up and running by next weekend. I will get pictures of it tomorrow for you guys to see and I will also take a few pics when we fire it up. It was built for a bicentennial event for a near by town that was founded on iron. He will be hauling it over there on a trailer and doing a demonstration assuming everything works out and it melts iron.

I’m thinking there has to be a way to separate lead from copper through. How do the scrap metal recycling companies do it when they have a few tons of mixed scrap copper?

How much would be lost by cutting off the joints?

I'm thinking you need to separate it chemically or
an electro-chemical solution.

Much easier to do in an industrial environment.

That's how they concentrate copper ore.

Here are some pictures of the unfinished cupola and our two furnaces. The large propane one with the blue hood over it has not been fired in this location yet but hopefully we will melt some metal in it soon. The smaller one is great for playing around with aluminum. The other two pictures are of the cupola in its building stages right now. It should be ready for a test fire to cure the packing next weekend and then the following weekend we hopefully should be pouring iron.

Jim, I think you are right. I will probably end up selling the solder joints to the scrap yard but I just wanted to check first and make sure there wasn’t a way I could separate the two metals.

holy cow now there a set up!! looks like you are planning on doing some serious casting. Very nice

i think if you threw the joints into a crucible the lead and tin would burn to an oxide long before the copper melted. you would need to skim off the oxide but the fumes of the lead burning ?????????????

Actually I've been thinking about copper myself. Would it be hard to cast copper bullets? Or does anyone know of bullet molds for copper bullets? I'm not fond of the thought of melting lead for my reloads.