CAn I brass you a question?

S

Sterlinghaney25

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Im wanting to make brass bolsters, butt guards, etc. Can I use plumbing brass and smelt it to a form? What temps should I use, and do I do any kind of quench or just air cool? Never worked with it at all so whatever info would be helpful.
Thanks,
Sterling
 
I can't help you with the casting part, but I do know if you get brass too hot you can burn off or oxidize the zinc out of the alloy, and even at the proper melting temperature there can be zinc fumes rising from the molten brass that can make you sick. Use proper ventilation or a fume collector or a fume rated respirator
 
I have a vent fan above my forge that stays on while the heat is on, no matter what you are heating proper vent is a must. Especiallywith propane
 
Melting and reforming it is not the way to go. Just get brass stock in the size you need and subtract material until you get the shape you want.

That plumbing brass can be sold for cash, and the cash spent on the right stuff.
 
I know that's the proper way to do it and I've been reducing brass stock for a long time just on a new blade I'm working on now I want the whole thing hand forged. Kind of a return tO the good ol days thing. Also Im wanting to make the handle and guard out of polished brass. Not using any power tools for this one.
 
Why are you thinking about using brass plumbing parts? Is it because of availability (cheap)? If so you'll end up spending more on the stuff you'll need to melt it down and cast it into the shapes/forms you want. You'll need a crucible to contain the metal as it melts into a liquid state and either ingot molds (see image below) or casting molds (like lost wax casting) to pour the molten metal into. There are other ways to mold it like cuttle fish, sand casting or lost wax casting. Lost wax casting is really cool in that you can carve you knife hardware out of hard wax to create molds for casting exact replicas into metal, but it's an involved process and requires even more equipment.

Here are a couple other links to similar threads....


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Whoops, looks like you posted while I was writing. I guess what I wrote isn't relative then. Sorry. I thought you wanted to smelt brass. Sounds like you actually want to forge it though. I've not done any of that.
 
I have a crucible and know how to mold . I've done quite a bit of casting with lead and some copper just never with brasss and I have PLENTY of it to melt down my bro owns a scrap yard so my Christmas present every year is
Scrap picks whenever I want 
 
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