Pewter and copper.

[sidecar_jon]

 Pattern welded steel Is doable on a track anvil, although chainsaw (damascus) is a PITA at the best of times. The very first forge weld I ever made, was a cable (damascus) billet on a track anvil with a charcoal fire.

     On the subject of copper to pewter, have you considered tinning the copper completely with lead free solder then fusing it to the pewter with an iron?

Up until now i've found pewter all to easy to melt. I think the way to do this is melt pewter onto/into copper.  Pooling and inlaying it either with heat of hammer blows. I don't have a forge just a propane torch at the moment, so melting lost of things isn't an option. Neither do i have a rolling mill just me a hammer and the torch in a shed...in a built up area! All good tips though thanks.

[sidecar_jon]

It's probably worth experimenting with different alloys, there are quite a few different tin based 'white metal' alloys for various plate, casting and soldering purposes.

Alother realted technique is mokume gane, which you may have come across, fusing layers of copper and silver of nickel to create complex layered patterns

Seems after experimentation, tin has odd properties when mixed with other hot metals, It eats right through copper with only a hint of a temperature increase(bellow coppers melting point!) So inclusions have to be tightly controlled. I melted some copper and added pewter, wow copper and pewter makes a really brittle mix, a hammer blow shatters it totally.
I tried a bit of mokume gane, crudely melting some silver jewellery onto a copper sheet and folding it over hammering and folding again, then hammering it end on. I also tried drilling partially through the resulting lump and hammering it flat to make an eye pattern. It worked Ok enough to make me think if i made it again id be successful. Use more silver i think is the key. It is however hellishly noisy!

[Endeavour Cull]

I don't know if you have ever seen a phase diagram? It shows the phases of solidification and the temperatures in relation to the amount of dissolved  metals (or not dissolved, that depends on the type of materials you use to alloy).



You can see that the melting temperature of the copper radically drops when more lead has been put in.

Most of the phase diagrams are binary (two metals), some are made for three different metals. It gets very complicated at that stage.


If I got you in a 'interesting, i want to know more'- state, then you can find heremore diagrams.
And here the different diagram-types etc.

[sidecar_jon]

I must admit ive never seen a phase diagram. Now my head hurts!. Thanks

[Endeavour Cull]

Pleasure! 

[sidecar_jon]

I've since been playing with making Mokume-gane which while possible for my purposes needs to be silver and copper, less risky i think is melting silver drops onto copper rather than laminating it. Where did i put hat silver tea spoon!

[Narsil]

It's quite possible to make mokume by using a very simple press, as simple as two steel plates with a bolt at each corner, just tighten and heat. The fact that copper expands more than steel with heat will increase the pressure, screw clamps or a vise etc would also work fine.

[Endeavour Cull]

There's also something like explosion welding

Explosion Welding	LQ | LQ+ | HQ

[sidecar_jon]

It's quite possible to make mokume by using a very simple press, as simple as two steel plates with a bolt at each corner, just tighten and heat. The fact that copper expands more than steel with heat will increase the pressure, screw clamps or a vise etc would also work fine.

The way i did it was, two g-clamps on a stack of (very clean) brass and copper, big propane torch, red hot for as long as i thought worthwhile, tap with a hammer when red hot (not hard) and it was fused fine. However i'm interested in making bowls, and not small bowls either (12"). Brass have proved too hard compared to copper and in combination, to work effectively. The deferential hardness causes problems both in rolling an effective sheet out and when hammering. Id encourage anyone to have go, though, its fairly easy to get a nice lump of laminated metals and would make a very nice item for jewellery or say a knife handle.