Casting fun

[glasseye]

Tonight I decided to make a soapstone mold to cast pewter ingots in. The usual method to create ingots is to just pour molten pewter onto an anvil with a couple of steel guide blocks, effectively open face casting, and then bang on it with a hammer until it fits through the rolling mill. Hammer conditioning the pewter this way does make it easier to strike, but unfortunately my neighbors don't really appreciate the noise.

So yeah. I grabbed some tools, cut a block out of my rather questionable soapstone, and carved a mold. It looked like everything was going great! It cast very easily, so I made half a dozen ingots.

Then I tried to roll one into sheet.

Too big for the mill.

>:(

Comments

[tejolote.livejournal.com]

Doh!

[mbartell.livejournal.com]

I've only played a little with casting- but wouldn't upping the copper in the mix make it more maleable when you just heat it? I have never messed with pewter, but I really like working with silver and copper...

[glasseye.livejournal.com]

It might, but we strike our coins cold. The alloys we've played with that have much copper at all (>1%) have been too hard.