Metals and Casting Tips

[carl]

I've mentioned this here somewhere before. I have been using the metal moulds for about 50 or so years. When I was a kid I used to make soldiers and then blow them up with fire crackers or shoot at them with a gun. Always kept the remnants and remade the soldiers. A great source of lead if you live in the USA is at the many gun ranges here. The bullets are mostly lead and most ranges will sell it to you cheap or if you go shooting there alot, they'll just give you as much as you want. I have no idea what the composition of my lead is today since it has been remelted possibly hundreds of times and mixed with so much else. The only problem with the bullet lead is the first time you melt it some of the unburned gun powder will smell. Also, lots of junk floats to the top or settles on the bottom such as Brass or Copper. One thing I just read here somewhere was about the lead weights used to balance tires. I never thought of that and my next door neighbor is a mechanic so got to ask him for some of that stuff. I remember when I was a kid I always wondered why some of my soldiers were shinny and some were so dull. I used to think all lead was just lead and now I know the stuff I use could be almost anything by now.

[paul79sydney]

hello to all ..

i am new to the moulding class of 2006..
i would like to find out what you all do wwhen you have extra mould metal left over from a pour and need to store it for the night???

what do you do ?? do you leave it in the pot/ saucepan or do you have a mould made in the shape of a gold bar that you use??

maybe this is a product that prince august could make and sell to its happy customers..

i have recently purchased a few mould kits of the chess range and do not wish to waste my extra mould metal...

paul australia

[General Davout]

Hi Paul,
I normally would let it cool in the pan and then put it into a little storage container I use for all the trimmings and extra pieces, just be sure its cooled properly. If I have a lot left over, I'll sometimes cast an extra figure or two, even if they are to be melted down the following day as too much model metal left in a block or bar is difficult to break and may take longer to remelt.

[paul79sydney]

gee and to think it was as simple as fill another mould and than later i can melt it..



sily me.
i should have thought of that. huh,

ok i should aslo say that the pot/ saucepan i am going to use is about 6 inches across. i am going to melt up a batch and use the ladle to collect and pour the pieces into the moulds..

as long as i keep the ladle warm / not burning hot / this should work .??

does anyone else see any probs with doing this.? as to make up a batch for each figure would be very hard...

thanks again in advance
paul

[General Davout]

Hi Paul,
I normally melt what I need in the ladle and then pour directly into the mould, rather than melt a bigger batch in a pot.

[lensman]

As to what to do with left over metal I picked up an ingot mould from an on line shooter’s supply house and use it to convert metal into handy, easily identified, ingots. Although I use PA Model metal for important detail, like faces, or where I need a little flexibility, such as muskets and flag staffs, for bodies and other bulky items I use linotype metal of which I currently have about thirty pounds, purchased for fifty cents a pound. Because I don’t want to get my high quality (and expensive) Prince August metal mixed in with my cheap (and brittle) linotype metal the ingots are perfect since I can scratch a symbol on each when it cools telling me what kind of metal it is.

While pans, stoves and ladles are alright to start with if one is serious about casting they should invest in a Lee electronic casting pot. They are about $50.00 U.S. but more than worth it. Using the pot I can sit at a work bench or out on the patio and cast in comfort. They have a pour spout on the bottom and a pull lever on the side that allows me to direct a stream of molten metal easily and safely into the mould sitting under it. I have the pot sitting in a wooden tray with a inch and a half lip running around the sides. I think it was originally designed to hold plates for a person sitting in bed and cost me about two dollars but it is worth it because if I were to knock over a freshly filled mould, or even open the valve and let hot metal run all over the place, I am still safe since the lip keeps the hot metal from running off the table and into my lap.

Also because there is a large reservoir of molten metal in the Lee pot I can cast a large number of moulds very quickly. I normally run about a half dozen at a time and by the time the last one is filled the first one is cooled enough to open. One can really knock out a bunch of figures that way.

John

[carl]

nick said:

how many times can metal be heated up befor it crumbles?

Please try to remember that most of the metals discussed here are Lead, Tin, Zinc, etc. These are natural elements. They do not crumble. They may combine with other elements such as Oxigen but they themselves stay the way they are and always have been for about 5 Billion years now. If you can get them to crumble you will be doing something that has not ever been done before.

[lensman]

A while back I read a history of the Britians toy soldier company and one of the things they mentioned was that every morning, before work started, the company took delivery of several pallets full of linotype ingots, which is what they made their figures from. With the coming of the digital revolution print shops and small town newspapers all over the U.S. (and I suppose Europe) are getting rid of their stocks of the metal and because so much is on the market all at once it is very cheap. I pay fifty cents U.S. a pound and frankly I really don’t think it is worth my time or the trouble to find anything cheaper. As it is a 54mm figure (which is the main kind I cast) sets me back a whopping nickel each!

On the plus side linotype is cheap and produces extremely sharp, smooth castings (they practically have a mirror finish!) with every drop of PA’s fine detail clearly visible. After writing that I went to the bin I keep unpainted figures in and looked at some. They are really, really sharp clean and clear.

On the minus side the metal is brittle and small bits, like rifles and such, are prone to breaking. I have even had arms and horse’s legs break off when I was trimming excess metal. That is why I keep a stock of PA model metal on hand to cast the delicate bits. The other thing is that it melts at a higher temperature than model metal and I suppose that this shortens the life of the mould but even so I still get several hundred figures before I have to replace the mould and at a nickel apiece (compared to about a dollar each for model metal) I really don’t mind giving the money to PA for moulds rather than for metal. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

On the subject of making your own moulds I highly recommend it! It is fun, relatively easy, and allows you to make figures that wouldn’t otherwise be available. However since the RTV is no way near as robust as a PA mould this is one place where the lower melting point of Model Metal really comes in handy.

John

[carl]

paul79sydney said:

i would like to find out what you all do wwhen you have extra mould metal left over from a pour and need to store it for the night???what do you do ?? do you leave it in the pot/ saucepan or do you have a mould made in the shape of a gold bar that you use??
paul australia

I melt all my metal in a large cast Iron pot and slowly pour it into a ladle that has a divider with holes in the center. This holds back impurities. I use the large pot so I can melt lots and lots of lead at once. Now as to what to do when your finished and there is still lots of melted lead left. I have purchased brass and cast iron ashtrays and small round and square other things in brass or caset iron. The excess lead goes into these which I keep nearby while casting figures. One brass ashtray has really nice designs on the bottom. A few times I put a few coins in there, poured lead over that and when cooled I had a fantastic looking paper weight. Coat them with clear paint and give away as gifts.

[gleaner]

Hi,

In the bad old days of my youth it was common to come accross the remains of bonfires when playing on the other side of the local sea wall. People would burn up piles of copper wire off-cuts or car batteries to recover the scrap metal. Scrap copper having two values for "bright" or "burned".

Anyway, the useful tip was that the standard way of making scrap lead ingots was to pour it into the frog of a building brick. So most of the scrap lead around here came with the words "London Brick Company" cast in. As this produces an ingot with a triangular cross section it is easy to produce thin ingots by pouring in a small amout of lead which then cools quickly because of the mass of the brick. But make sure the brick is absolutely dry before use.

By the way, the old sea wall area is now a nature reserve and the kids on motor bikes are banned.

Mike

[gleaner]

For those in the UK, a Frey Bentos steak and kidney pudding (not pie) tin is a good shape to melt down old soldiers. You can pile in a load without chopping them up and then the one piece tapered shape makes it easy to turn out the ingot once it's cooled.

p.s - Instead of boiling the pudding in the tin for half an hour in a saucepan of water, I turn it out into a Pyrex bowl. Then pack a tin of "vacume packed" sweetcorn around it to hold the shape and microwave for a couple of minutes. (Very sweet, very tasty)

Mike

[richard]

Hi I made my first figures the other day. After much reading of this site and others, I decided on 1:1 of linotype and pewter this has cast very well. I also have used 1:2 of tinmans solder to linotype and this also OK but does not flow as well, probably due to the lower tin content.
I have also seen mention of use of graphite powder as a release agent, some mention of spraying the mould first with something ? I would be interested if any one has tried this

[carl]

I use Graphite or just carbon black for releasing the figures from metal moulds all the time. Sure is messy.

[darius]

PA please reply i am 14 yeasr old i really want to cast metal figures but it is very hard to find tin in lithuania do you know how much tin there is in soldering lead i think i will start using it.and if i dont find tin does the the figures look really bad casted completely in tin?

[Prince August]

darius said:

PA please reply i am 14 yeasr old i really want to cast metal figures but it is very hard to find tin in lithuania do you know how much tin there is in soldering lead i think i will start using it.and if i dont find tin does the the figures look really bad casted completely in tin?

Solder is an alloy and therefore is hard to define as there are many different types.
www.princeaugust.ie/alloys/index.html

We do think it should work. You could also consider mixing some of our metal with the solder to improve the casting if you find the results are less than perfect.
A mix of 35% lead and 65% tin is considered a good mix.