> Sounds like you are the man for the job Harvey! Yep, acytelene > ought to do the trick! Lone Ranger didn't have that technological > advantage, if I remember corectly. :) He must have known a > blacksmith with a forge!
Either that or he alloyed it with lead to lower the melting point. *WE* wouldn't *want* to do *that*, now would we!!!! > > It appears that the Silver will have to be melted by using an > > acetylene torch and being careful not to melt the steel or iron > > ladle. After all, if the Lone Ranger could mold siver bullets, > > then we ought to be able to mold the silver wire. %^D Harvey, The problem with melting stuff in a metal cup over an open flame is the radiation and convection losses. You just can't get the stuff hot enough in open air. That's why people use smelting furnaces. You can build a really nice setup pretty cheaply from refractory cement and/or firebrick. Use an electric blower and a propane tank like they use on gas barbecues for the heat source. A unit like this can readily melt aluminum, brass, silver, and even iron. I haven't built one yet, but the plans are out there and it looks like one helluva lotta FUN! (I know you'll like that part...) If you really want to get into the small scale foundry business check out some of the sites on the internet: This one I just found via infoseek search. This links to his home page. Looks like an interesting feller. Follow the link to his foundry page and read about his backyard smelter... http://reality.sgi.com/employees/kurts_engr/homePage.html Here are a couple of links to the Artmetal Village site. The first is a silver casting furnace, the other a non-ferrous metal one. <grin> http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/edu/arts/metal/TOC/ proces/cast/ag_cast.html http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/edu/arts/metal/TOC/ proces/cast/furnace.html (I was getting line-wrap problems with the long URL's, so I just broke them after the TOC/ part. Please re-assemble before use. The Artmetal site was having some problems when I just went to review these, so I couldn't be sure they were still there. But other sites still had links to them, so I suspect the problem is temporary. Let us know how you proceed! Good luck and be careful. Mike [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [[email protected] ] [Speaking only for himself... ]
