A naive question I am sure.
Googling this newsgroup I see that using a steel crucible for melting bronze is iffy at best because the melting point of steel is too close to that of bronzes.
Recently I found that some high-end cookware for camping and home use is made from titanium. But titanium is a reactive metal. Would it be acceptable for melting bronze (or aluminum) or would that be, er, exciting?
My guess is that it is undesirable else it would be common practice.
In many cases what they sell you as "titanium" is alumin(i)um with some titanium. "Titan"-frames of bicycles have about 3% Ti.
Nick
Forget Ti, either use Hasteloy, Inconel or go straight to ceramics which is what you should be using in the first place for a crucible to melt aluminum, brass, bronze, steel...
Wayne
Hello Fred:
Not a naive question at all. I suspect that the titanium would catch fire at some point in the melt, and things would indeed get rather exciting (I have used Ti chips in rocket propellant to create sparks in the tail, and very nice sparks they are, too!)
A long time ago I burned through a (fairly thin) stainless-steel pot in an attempt to melt brass in a charcoal furnace. For a metal pot, it would seem that wall thickness is important if not critical.
A silicon carbide or clay-graphite crucible is likely to be a much better investment for melting bronze than a titanium pot. I was surprised at the reasonable prices listed on Budget Casting Supply's site---apparently they include shipping in the price.
Best -- Terry
snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote: ...
India would be a great place to buy clay-graphite crucibles, if only shipping were included.
-jiw
======== or make your own -- see
Unka' George [George McDuffee] ............................... On Theory: Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99), German physicist, philosopher. Aphorisms "Notebook J," aph. 77 (written 1765-99; tr. by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990).
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