Melting Copper - Anyone Do It?

I must just be getting lucky. I have melted scrap copper wire in a small crucible made of Satanite (refractory cement) with a couple of soft fire bricks to contain the heat and a Burns-O-matic with MAP gas. I use borax for flux. I do it outside.

I have not had problems with porosity...it makes cool little fingers of copper a little bigger than your thumb and I just forge it out (cold forge) to make barstock.

Brian
 
If I were going to the trouble of melting copper I'd go ahead and make bronze. Bronze has such a nice color and is harder than copper by itself. 10% to 15% tin added to the copper will make a nice bronze. I've heard of people adding phosphor shot to melts to make them pour better. Here is a link to a website where you can get most everything you might need but is also just a good source of information, they also carry a degasser/flux that solves the porosity problem:

http://www.budgetcastingsupply.com/

Good luck, this is one of my future projects also.
 
Thanks for the tip, Guy, but I'm only interested in copper atm. I have some bronze, but not crazy about the color right now. I also thank ye for the lead to Budget Casting Supply. They have a lot of good stuff even we knifemakers can use. Another site is the backyard casting lab, but he mostly fiddles around with casting aluminum and making aluminum pulleys and so on.

I think what I'll try to do is get me a decent crucible and try melting some in my charcoal forge. A little degasser or just some borax and see how it turns out.
 
Darn Jeff, I was hoping you'd try a bronze melt so I could see how it works out before I try one! :D
 
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