Where can I find some tin?

Factual Questions
1

I’m a wannabe bronze maker and have plenty of copper but can’t find tin anywhere. I’m after something cheap that I can recycle, get from a scrapyard, find, etc.
There seems to be a lot less tin around than I had thought. Tin-cans aren’t, galvanized roofing and the like is not really suitable and I don’t want to go buying chemical samples or the like. Anyone have an idea?

Thanks

Testy

2

Your best bet may be tin powder on eBay. Everything else I searched for on (bulk tin Sn) or (tin metal Sn) was for tin signs or tins (containers, usually made out of some other metal).

3

jayjay

Thanks for this. I don’t know why I didn’t come across that myself as I did a good bit of googling before posting. Like you, I saw all kinds of metals except the one I wanted.

Thanks again

Testy

4

check out some lead-free solders. If you can tolerate a little bit of alloying elements, the stuff I have at work is 99.3% Sn/0.7% Cu. It should be easy to get bar solder so you don’t have to deal with getting rid of the rosin.

5

If he’s making bronze, the copper’s not going to hurt anything anyway, is it?

6

good point :slight_smile:

7

jz7817

Great! I’m going to light the forge today anyway so I will get myself off to Home Depot or wherever and see if I can find some of this. Speaking of solder, I used to do a LOT of soldering years ago. I recently tried to solder some items with the newer lead-free solders and they frankly seem to be crap. The stuff doesn’t want to flow and refuses to wick into the solder joint. Has anyone else had this experience or is it just me letting my skills atrophy?

Thanks

Testy

8

Just an edit on above. The solders I’ve tried recently are silver-solders.

9

Pewter tankards - that’s what I’ve been recycling for my lost wax casting projects - I find these in charity shops.

If it’s modern pewter, it should be lead free and is nearly entirely composed of tin.

10

McMaster-Carr has tin.

11

Mangetout

Great idea! I’ll check Goodwill on the way to home depot. I’m probably going to wind up with 10 kilos of bronze before I figure out what I want to do with it.:stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks again

Testy

12

Mind’s Eye Wandering

The McMaster place is excellent. I’ve never heard of them before

Thanks

Testy

13

Not what you’re looking for, but interesting:

Sturbridge Village here in Massachusetts has a 19th century working village, complete with Tinsmith. I asked him where he got his tin from. They use tin sheet for fabricating all their wares.

He told me that it comes from overseas – Europe, I think.

14

How do you plan to melt the bronze? What sort of material do you plan to use to make the moulds?

I’m interested in trying bronze casting for myself.

15

Mangetout

I recently built a small forge for making knives. My first experiments with it were a bit “iffy” and I accidentally melted a 10" piece of W-1 steel so I know I have sufficient temperature for bronze.
I plan to make both the crucibles and moulds from clay and bake them in the forge to harden them. I want to experiment with making bell-metal and use it for knife fittings.
If this experiment works, I will go ahead and invest in some silicon carbide crucibles and maybe some fancier mold material as well.

Regards

Testy

16

Mangetout

As an oh-by-the-way, a forge turned out to be much simpler than I had expected, a pile of firebricks, a small shop-vac for a blower, and some charcoal.

Testy

17

you need to use a good amount of flux, heat and solder before the flux burns away.

18

I’m a chemist, so I dutifully checked Sigma-Aldrich for you.

Yeah, you don’t want to buy tin from a chemical supply company. It’s prohibitively expensive.

About $218 / kg. Keep on trying to find a good recycled source.

19

johnpost

I’ve tried using what I consider a large amount of flux, both the kind that comes with the tube and borax and neither one seems to help very much. I was soldering copper to steel after grinding to bare metal and degreasing using acetone. It should have been an easy connection to make but took me all afternoon to get it done and the solder never did flow properly. I think I’ll go looking for some lead-based solder.

Thanks

Testy

20

Hi GameHat
I looked at a few chemical-supply places earlier and the prices sent me running. I think I can get some bar solder today and that ought to be sufficient. Thanks for checking Aldritch for me.

Testy