Thread: Anyone have any experience casting brass?

Originally Posted by Jim Ferrous

I have unlimited access to brass scrap. What I'd like to do with it is pour some castings to end up with brass cylinders around 12-14 inches long by 4 inch diameter.

Anyone know how one goes about this?

I tried melting brass and it was a failure.

While my crude backyard furnace does aluminium OK, brass takes a LOT more heat to melt, so you need a good setup to melt it.

Also I believe it gives off particularly nasty gases, so better read up on the safety side.

Rob

Brass cylinders would be relatively easy in terms of ramming up your flask, and patterns, you will need to make core boxes so you have cores if you want the cylinders hollow.

Where are you located??

I've done a bit, you will need a furnace, crucible, pattern, petrobond, crucible handling equipment, safety gear etc....

You can get away with a normally aspirated gas burner. But a forced air burner is better.

A good starting point is to read up in the foundry area of the forum. I wrote up a bit of an introductory blurb https://www.woodworkforums.com/attach...casting101.pdf

Recycling brass and bronze scrap is good fun, and whenever we do a bronze pour, I try to remember to prepare a few cylindrical blanks as stock for the lathe.

Regards
Ray

Thanks for the info.

I'm still interested in doing this, my two sons are plumbers and scrap brass in 'on tap' so to speak in virtually unlimited quantities and the price of brass bar stock is very dear so pouring brass round stock looks super appealing to me.

Just not sure if it's out of my league, I've been watching a ton of uTube videos and reading up as much as I can find on the web about it.

Hi there,

If you have virtually unlimited access to scrap brass, you would be mad not to do the homework and set yourself up a nice foundry!

Simon

I'm casting aluminium using all online knowledge, ie making an LPG burner, making a furnace, mixing the sand, making a crucible etc.

Metalcasting forums

Quite a few Australians are members, there may be someone local to you who can guide your endeavours.

Not 100% sure what the actual brass tap bodies are made of, but the spindles and handles look like 'normal' brass.