Melting Pots

[ftncityfatboy]

Will the average melting pot for melting lead also melt silver? I know it takes a higher temp to melt silver, if its out there - what's the best melting pot"

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Do you wear a white hat and a mask, kimosabe? Or are you just making vampire ammo?

Apologies, just joking.

I'd be curious about this as well.

[Photoguy67]

The melting point of silver is 1763.474 °F and lead is 621.5 °F so I doubt the same pot would work.

[Caster]

No. Even if it got hot enough, casting a silver bullet is (for most people) not possible. The heat would do permanent damage to a good mold. The only feasible alternative is to turn them. I save scrap silver myself and do this very thing. I built a miniature cement furnace that uses charcoal and a hair dryer. It's all it will do to get hot enough to melt. I pull it out of the furnace and while it's very hot, pound it into a round shape. Laying down a clean paper towel on the ways, I turn it to shape. Save the shavings until next time.

Casting silver can be done, but we ( bullet casters) don't have the means to do it. Once again hollywood has fed us a steamy pile of bull £¥|π

What are you wanting to make? I'm making 350g keith style .45 long colts.

[I_Like_Pie]

Lol Caster. I have a hard time finding scrap lead. Here you are casting silver!!!! I need to rub elbows with you folks in Middle Tennessee a little bit more.

[Caster]

Lol Caster. I have a hard time finding scrap lead. Here you are casting silver!!!! I need to rub elbows with you folks in Middle Tennessee a little bit more.

I've only done a couple so far. I plan to make six and keep them in a little box I made out of bloodwood. More of a conversation piece, yet fully functional.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Long ago I knew an artistic beatnik fellow in Atlanta who made beautiful gold rings and other small jewerlry items (and made a good living at it). He would carve his prototype in wax, then bury the wax in a casting. Can't recall, maybe plaster of paris. Mostly everything he made was one-off custom, though perhaps there would be a way to recycle the molds.

He would mount the mold in a spring-loaded spin caster and melt the gold in a small crucible with some sort of torch. Then pour the gold into the cast and trigger the spin caster. The molten gold would vaporize the wax and take its place in the mold. Then crack the mold and polish up the finished piece.

One time he made a mold of one of those tiny plastic snap-boxes about 1 inch square. Then decorated it with jewels and scollwork and spin-casted a perfect working gold pill box. It had the same "ball and slot" hinges as the commonplace plastic box, and the little snap-nubs copied from the plastic box also were functional as snap closures in the gold end result. A very skilled fellow.

The melting point of gold is a little higher than silver, 1947 F, so I suppose the same thang would work for silver. It wouldn't exactly be a mass-production techinque.

Edited January 1, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[ftncityfatboy]

daughter is into crafting jewelry, she wanted to throw some silver. I didn't know if reloading pots would do the trick. I have no intentions of casting silver bullets, however, it would be neat to have a few just as conversation pieces. Thanks for all the help. FCFB