The Foundry / Metals and where to find them
Metals and where to find them
So you've got all your equipment together and you're raring to start melting... until you realize you don't have anything to melt. This page covers some sources of meltable scrap, including freebies and a couple of exotic metals, along with subjective ratings based on ease of acquisition and suitability for making ingots.
Aluminum
A great place to start. Easy to find and easy to melt. Non-toxic and inert.
- Soda cans: 2/10. You have to make sure there's absolutely no liquid left inside, and they leave behind a lot of dross when melted. Plastic linings burn, producing nasty smoke. Easy to find, though.
- Aluminum electrical wire: 7/10.
- Extruded aluminum: 7/10 overall. Bad for casting but fine for ingots. Easy to find. Distinguishable by its brushed appearance and consistent cross section.
- Extruded computer heatsinks: 6/10. Usually very thick and produces little dross. Watch out for attached copper heat pipes or steel mounting hardware.
- Ladders, poles, fences, moldings, shower door rails, etc.: 6/10. Great source of lots of metal. Usually comes with dirt, paint, and other gunk.
- Cast aluminum: 9/10. These alloys are a darker bluish gray compared to the bright gray/silver of pure and extruded aluminum. Much lower shrinkage than other alloys. Somewhat harder to find. Easily mistaken for magnesium, which is dangerous to melt.
- Car and engine parts: 7/10. Wheels, engine parts, and the like. Good source of large quantities. Often dirty, painted, and/or attached to other materials. Watch out for magnesium.
Copper
My favorite metal to pour. High melting point, more dangerous to melt, but incredibly satisfying to pour and cast into ingots. Can be a little splattery.
- Copper pipe: 7/10. Fine quality metal. Hard to pack into a crucible, often dirty or corroded, and may contain solder.
- Copper wire: varies by gauge and type. The thicker the wire, the better. Watch out for copper clad aluminum.
- Enamel-coated wire (AKA magnet wire): 4/10. Usually good purity. Harder to obtain in large quantities, sometimes difficult and messy to harvest. Smokes like hell when the coating burns off.
- Stranded wire: 2/10 (thin) to 8/10 (very thick). Usually very pure, but very time consuming and labor intensive to strip. The thicker the wire (both overall and per strand), the better. Watch out for copper-clad aluminum.
- Solid wire: 3/10 (thin) to 10/10 (very thick). High purity, easier to strip. Still a pain in the neck.
- Uninsulated electrical wire: 9/10. High purity, no stripping required. Not very common.
Brass
Similar to copper, but when melted, the zinc boils/burns with a dazzling white flame and releases toxic zinc fumes. May contain lead.
- Pipe fittings: 7/10. Can be dirty or come with other materials attached.
- Power strip contacts: 4/10. You'd need a lot of power strips.
- Bullet casings: 8/10. Easy to obtain from shooting ranges. Haven't melted any myself. ALWAYS CHECK FOR LIVE ROUNDS!!!
Zinc
Melts at about 420°C (nice), pretty easy to handle. Less common. Don't let it get red hot, or it'll release fumes like brass does.
Lead
Very low melting point and easy to cast, but highly toxic. Not recommended unless you have a healthy fear of lead poisoning.
- Lead solder: 2/10. Usually roughly half tin, so very impure.
- Lead acid batteries: 4/10. Decent quantities to be had here. Very difficult and possibly dangerous to harvest. Positive electrodes are lead dioxide, which cannot be melted like lead.
- Bullets: 7/10. Can be gathered from shooting ranges (but not when they're active). Haven't melted any myself.
Bismuth
Like lead, but non-toxic. Forms very cool (but difficult to isolate) crystals as it freezes. Good luck finding this stuff locally. It's hardly used in anything except antacids and cosmetics, which are very poor sources of metallic bismuth. Fun fact: bismuth is very slightly radioactive. "Bismuth is lead for people who fear death." -Ex&F
- Online sources: 10/10, because it's the only source. Purity can be questionable if you buy it from sketchy sources, i.e. Chinese eBay sellers.
Indium
Very interesting metal, and the softest metal that you can safely take a bite out of! (It's still quite hard, so be careful not to chip a tooth.) Melts at just 156.6°C and pours nicely. Totally worth buying a few grams just to mess with.
- Online sources: 10/10. Not terribly expensive in small quantities. The same caveats apply regarding sketchy Chinese sellers.
- Certain Intel CPUs: 7/10, the only scrap source I know of. Very difficult to harvest, uncertain purity. Many CPUs don't use indium at all. The process of extracting the indium is beyond the scope of this page.
My favorite metal to pour. High melting point, more dangerous to melt, but incredibly satisfying to pour and cast into ingots. Can be a little splattery.
- Copper pipe: 7/10. Fine quality metal. Hard to pack into a crucible, often dirty or corroded, and may contain solder.
- Copper wire: varies by gauge and type. The thicker the wire, the better. Watch out for copper clad aluminum.
- Enamel-coated wire (AKA magnet wire): 4/10. Usually good purity. Harder to obtain in large quantities, sometimes difficult and messy to harvest. Smokes like hell when the coating burns off.
- Stranded wire: 2/10 (thin) to 8/10 (very thick). Usually very pure, but very time consuming and labor intensive to strip. The thicker the wire (both overall and per strand), the better. Watch out for copper-clad aluminum.
- Solid wire: 3/10 (thin) to 10/10 (very thick). High purity, easier to strip. Still a pain in the neck.
- Uninsulated electrical wire: 9/10. High purity, no stripping required. Not very common.
Brass
Similar to copper, but when melted, the zinc boils/burns with a dazzling white flame and releases toxic zinc fumes. May contain lead.
- Pipe fittings: 7/10. Can be dirty or come with other materials attached.
- Power strip contacts: 4/10. You'd need a lot of power strips.
- Bullet casings: 8/10. Easy to obtain from shooting ranges. Haven't melted any myself. ALWAYS CHECK FOR LIVE ROUNDS!!!
Zinc
Melts at about 420°C (nice), pretty easy to handle. Less common. Don't let it get red hot, or it'll release fumes like brass does.
Lead
Very low melting point and easy to cast, but highly toxic. Not recommended unless you have a healthy fear of lead poisoning.
- Lead solder: 2/10. Usually roughly half tin, so very impure.
- Lead acid batteries: 4/10. Decent quantities to be had here. Very difficult and possibly dangerous to harvest. Positive electrodes are lead dioxide, which cannot be melted like lead.
- Bullets: 7/10. Can be gathered from shooting ranges (but not when they're active). Haven't melted any myself.
Bismuth
Like lead, but non-toxic. Forms very cool (but difficult to isolate) crystals as it freezes. Good luck finding this stuff locally. It's hardly used in anything except antacids and cosmetics, which are very poor sources of metallic bismuth. Fun fact: bismuth is very slightly radioactive. "Bismuth is lead for people who fear death." -Ex&F
- Online sources: 10/10, because it's the only source. Purity can be questionable if you buy it from sketchy sources, i.e. Chinese eBay sellers.
Indium
Very interesting metal, and the softest metal that you can safely take a bite out of! (It's still quite hard, so be careful not to chip a tooth.) Melts at just 156.6°C and pours nicely. Totally worth buying a few grams just to mess with.
- Online sources: 10/10. Not terribly expensive in small quantities. The same caveats apply regarding sketchy Chinese sellers.
- Certain Intel CPUs: 7/10, the only scrap source I know of. Very difficult to harvest, uncertain purity. Many CPUs don't use indium at all. The process of extracting the indium is beyond the scope of this page.