Smelter - Page 2

Originally Posted by Copper Head

What is needed for people who want to do back yard bars , we need to be able to purchase a standardized mold or molds that could not be correct weight to size unless true copper . Take a penny - a true copper penny has a weight not faked out by the zinc penny .
But what I can tell you is this my yard has a hand held device that with the mysterious - of I know NOT can tell what metals are true

The handheld device is most likely an XRF scanner, similar to this:

Portable XRF Analyzer Product Comparison Chart

These units work great, so long as you are using them for their intended purpose, and not expecting a quantitative analysis. Many require specific programing for the class of metals they are used for, so unless your scrap yard has purchased the programing for all metals, there might be other metals associated when your material is scanned that are showing as unknown. A trick the less reputable yards do is to claim that the XRF scanner/analyzer cannot read the other metals because they are not worth anything, when in fact they know the unknown metals are worth something.

Scott

This was in the bin of the machine shop one morning (where I found the metal Bronco's helmet). It's a old Goss propane furnace/smelter that phone company workers used to melt lead when working on lines. I need to plumb it and test it one of these days.