Re: Casting Copper

Posted by Jesse Brennan on February 15, 19100 at 11:18:03:

In Reply to: Re: Casting Copper posted by John Dach on February 15, 19100 at 02:17:14:

An interesting place where working copper is the village specialty is Santa Clara de Cobre in Mexico. They used to refine copper and make hammer forged products. Today the melt copper scrap into ingots and hammer forge utilitarian and art objects. See:

http://www.ccu.umich.mx/mich/santa-clara/ (in spanish)

http://www.ecobre.com/htmls/cc.html

There was an article in Metalsmith on Santa Clara a while back but I don't have it handy.

I have wanted to go there but haven't made it yet.

Copper has a great affinity for oxygen or hydrogen which will cause porosity or inbrittlement depending on which you have.

Refining practice is to recover in an oxidzing atmosphere to eliminate hydrogen then deoxidize the melt.

Jesse

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