[TheForge] reclaiming copper

[James Binnion]

On Jul 1, 2006, at 11:11 AM, terry l. ridder wrote:

> hello;
>
> comments below.
>
> On Sat, 1 Jul 2006, Michael Horgan wrote:
>
>>
>> Perhaps tDan and Jim are attempting to save you from (further)  
>> INJURY!
>
> i do not know what their motivation is.

I assume that Dans motivation is the same as mine. To save you from  
screwing up either your,self or your equipment by using the wrong  
materials for your project.

>
> i do find it difficult to believe that a schedule 80 steel pipe  
> crucible
> is going to catastrophically fail in a single use even two uses.

Your original post said you had 700 lbs of copper cable to deal with  
this is more than a couple of crucible loads unless you have an  
industrial size furnace so I don't see how you can characterize it as  
one or two uses. It will alloy with the crucible which will  
contaminate the melt, raise the melting temperature of the resulting  
alloy which will result in greater alloying and more damage to the  
crucible and eventually failure of the crucible. When will depend on  
too many variables to even try to make a guess, but it will ruin the  
metal from iron contamination and ruin the crucible because the  
alloyed metal will be rather firmly bonded to the wall, think brazing  
as this is what you will be doing.

>
> if i had silicon carbide crucibles small enough to fit the coffee can
> foundry i would definitely use them. i do not so i am attempting to  
> make
> do with what i have on hand.

And we were trying to warn you of the pitfalls in your proposed path.

James Binnion
jbin at well.com