Realcent.org

I have been a member here for quite a while, and I don't post as often as I should, seem to busy reading what you guys post, I enjoy it very much. The way it looks, in Canada where I am the penny hoarding will come to an end in the next few years, so while I have amassed several ton of them and loved doing it, eventually I will be forced to quit, because of shortage. This almost discouraged me and I began to think of new ways to collect this lovely metal without the high premiums of the hand made bullion, and I came up with a plan to make my own. So after a lot of reasearch I built a furnace, and striped some wire I had lying around, and now have begun to cast kilo bars of copper. They are not perfect and definately need some fine tuning, it is just the begining a new way to continue this stacking hobby. If anyone has any advice on how to make them look better, I am all ears! I will try to attach a few pics.

Cheers,
Luke

I like the bars. Have you tried polishing the crap out of it? Maybe you already did? I know nothing about making these so excuse my ignorance, just thought I would chime in and tell you that I like the bar. And sorry to hear about your countries penny execution!

I'm no master caster by any stretch but I have to wonder, what flux are you using? It looks like you should be able to get rid of more of the impurities.

Still, not bad for home casting.....

I did not use any flux. I hear borax works, but I'm not sure when to add it and if you pour it with the flux on or off.

Did you pre-heat your mold? It appears that some of your initial pour cooled quickly.

No I did not preheat the mold. Thanks for the tip.

Nice going on the hoard, Luke. And I like the bars, too.

25 posts in a year and a half? We need to from you more often than that.

This is very intriguing, but what is the point in making them into bars? Planning on selling them?

nice. mini foundry.


very resourceful way to keep your hobby going.

anarchir wrote:This is very intriguing, but what is the point in making them into bars? Planning on selling them?

I'm not melting cents, there's no point they are copper bullion. These bars are made from 999 fine copper wire, i melt it for fun, and it stacks better than wire, also it doesnt cost anything to melt if you burn used oil. For now I do not plan to sell them, just stack.

It is nice to see some resourceful Canadians stepping up to try to find new ways to obtain copper once the pennies extinguish in September. My eyes will be glued to this website for every ounce of information I can get

Good luck with the bars!

I'd be interested in seeing your oil-fired burner and furnace assembly... all the way down to the crucible you're using and the mold. I'm getting into some backyard foundry work myself when this contract is up, and it's always nice to see how other people are doing it. I'm curious as to what kind of refractory you used for your furnace?

I won't ever melt my own pennies down, but like you, will cast bars from scrap copper pipe and wire. Actually, I plan on casting bars of aluminum, brass, and copper.

My2Cents wrote:I'd be interested in seeing your oil-fired burner and furnace assembly... all the way down to the crucible you're using and the mold. I'm getting into some backyard foundry work myself when this contract is up, and it's always nice to see how other people are doing it. I'm curious as to what kind of refractory you used for your furnace?

I won't ever melt my own pennies down, but like you, will cast bars from scrap copper pipe and wire. Actually, I plan on casting bars of aluminum, brass, and copper.

I will get pics of it sometime. I used Mizzou cast able refactory, good for 3000 degrees F. I started with AL, that melts like butter at 660C, but pure copper is a different animal, you need almost 1100 C or 2000degrees F

I bought a burner from http://www.hybridburners.com/products.html ... I think I bought the T-Rex. High effiency propane burner. I figure that I can heat up pretty good for what I want it for anyway. I thought about an oil fired burner and have seen some pretty great designs using a drip feed tube with used motor oil and a small blower to force the air in and burn hotter.... seen some even melt iron with it.

I'd like to see how you designed and built your burner. Who knows... maybe I'll have 2 furnaces and a forge by the time it's all said and done.

I like how you stamped your bar. I think once you pre heat your mold, the bar won't be so pitted and will look a lot better. Practice makes perfect ya know, but if you're just looking to stack... who cares.
Looking forward to your pictures

Ok thanks for the link, looks like their design would work well. I made a propane/natgas burner, but the get expensive to run. I got pics now but cannot seem to post them from the phone. Will post them when I get to the PC

Here are some pictures of the creation. Nothing fancy, just an old waterheater tank with 3" of refactory inside, mounted on a platform with casters for easy moving. I made the burners myself, the long one is for propane and natural gas, and the short one is a babington style used oil burner, which I still need to work a few bugs out of yet The crucible is made from heavy steel pipe with 3/8 plate weld on the bottom, I have a clay grafite crucible but have not used it yet because I need to make a set of tongs to handle it. I bought the molds, they are 80TOZ gold cast iron molds and when filled with copper, make a nice Kilo of about 37av oz. Hope this is helpful

That looks like the kind of set up I'll be running... just on a smaller scale. I'd really like to have a furnace large enough to melt 20+ pounds of aluminum at a time. I have the room and I'm still working on the design. I have a 40gal water heater that I saved when I put a new one in the house, so maybe I could use that for one of my smaller set ups. But when running such a large furnace, I almost need an oil burner. There's a lot of good information at this one website... http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/oilburners03.html
I'm not sure if you've seen this guys page, but there's a lot of information over there well suited for the DIY'er like me. Maybe he could give you some decent ideas on how to work some of the bugs out of your burner.

I'm wanting to cast big 5lb-10lb bars just to have something large and very stackable... but I need a large crucible (and hence... a large furnace) to do that. Maybe at that point I can start sledge hammering engine transmissions down and stacking large aluminum bricks.

Now you've gone and done it!!... Where the heck am I going to get the money for that?!?!....

Nice link!

reddirtcoins wrote:Now you've gone and done it!!... Where the heck am I going to get the money for that?!?!....

Nice link!

That's the best part.... you can pretty much salvage all your parts and pieces to build your own set-up.... minus the castable refractory and some gas regulators or burner parts. But even then... you're talking chump change. I bought a hybrid burner for a tad over $125-ish, and a high pressure gas regulator for $50. But you can build a burner for a far cry less (but it'll be less efficient of course). Burning old engine oil will really ramp up the heat for melting stuff faster, and that's easy to come by. The rest is some simple cutting and welding if you have the capability like i do.

And like he said before... it's a lot easier to stack bars of scrap metal than all the odd ball lengths of copper pipe/wire/aluminum framing.

Besides... there's just something cool about messing around with molten metal.

Now you got me thinking. I built a propane forge a few months back as I want to learn to blacksmith, gets plenty hot enough to pound a RR spike so now I guess we will have to see if it gets hot enough to melt some copper wire. Here is my first attempt at a knife.

OK so what bank do you buy wire at, and where do you dump the zinc wire

Not a bad looking knife! What is it made of?

SilverDragon72 wrote:Not a bad looking knife! What is it made of?

Railroad spike.

penny pretty wrote:OK so what bank do you buy wire at, and where do you dump the zinc wire

You don't need to do as much schmoozing to get free scrap wire as you do to buy and dump cents