Huge Copper Ingot - First Copper Bar Pour in Propane Furnace 

Okay, that is one seriously good looking copper bar!

Great job Ben - you clearly thought this through. Your safety and handling equipment appeared to be spot on. Lots of great lessons learned. Thank you

Absolutely gorgeous bar you made there, Ben. The ripples on the top side remind me of how ocean waves look when photographed by satellite. Love it!

I subscribed just so I'd be sure to hear you say "caw-pah" a few times a month, it makes me smile every time. Thanks, mate.

Thanks for all the good advice Ben. I’ve learned so much from your videos.it doesn’t even matter that your on the other side of the world mate!

Thanks Ben! Looks like I’m going to need a furnace! That’s pretty cool man

Excellent pour, Ben. Nice job.

Great joe Mr Ben thank you for your videos

Ben: You have really inspired me! Thanks for your videos! I have been collecting motors and transformers for a while now, as well as some thick copper wire cable. Yesterday I tore apart a large Argon LASER and got 5 Lbs 12oz of copper wire from the LASER's exciter coil alone! :-). I'm looking forward to making my own gas foundry to start melting and casting. Thanks again!

I want to suggest, if you have not already done so yourself, use a sawhorse perpendicular to your pouring bar towards the end where your crucible is. You can install a couple bolts into the top of your sawhorse to limit the pouring bar's movement as well. This will afford you a lot more control over your pour, as well as take a lot of the weight off your arms and back. Hope that helps!!!

Just starting out myself. The bar you made is perfect, that is my goal! I will get there. Congrats

I can feel the warmth of the day there, lovely its winter here in Scotland ,great video (you sound like mark little).

Another great video Ben, thank you

What a great and big bar! Those ripples are beautiful 😍😍😍

OOooh it sparkles in the sun like pure happiness. Excellent.

Awesome Ben, they look great! My kind of money right there!

Ben hi, I have been smelting and scrapping for a long time myself. The rule of thumb is an ingot is x 6 scrap value unless its really rough you will get x 3 or x 4 current scrap rates. A couple of pointers for you. Get the crucible very hot, red hot if possible, pop it on the side of the furnace chimney, in the flame, to save your MAP gas in the blow torch, its easier doing 3 or 4 at a time as to not block it. When you have finished a ' melt' you will find a second and third melt much quicker and more efficient, you will use less gas. Always give the molten metal a stir before you pour it. You can tip the ingot straight out of the graphite cruicible, you dont need to wait. Try brass too it makes beautiful ingots.

EXCELLENT .... VERY NICE VIDEO... I LIKE THIS KIND OF CASTING ...! THANK YOU..

sweet came out really nice!!! I need to save some money for one of them furnaces

My precious :) - Tnx for sharing your excitement 👍

Man the Sun shining on the pour, spectacular.

Beautiful looking bar!

Great job & great video! 👏👏👏👏👏 love watching you! ❤❤❤❤ God bless! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

built my own diy back yard foundry about 3 years ago it lasted about a year. made a lot of muffins out of aluminum and copper. been stock pilling up precious metals for a wile and seen my scrap collection getting to big to handle so just bought an electric furnace was able to get 2 runs out of it and it fried!!! and i was looking online all day today for a new one but propane and i came crossed the exact one you have here for only 345$ usd then about 20 mins later this vid showed up in my list to watch! so funny how it was the same furnace. well any way keep up them vids! been watching for a few months now trying to catch up on all your vids. very helpful!

Cant wait for mine. Keep scrapping

nice job! looks great!

First time we see you in a video and you have a mask on! excellent video! Been excited about seeing the forge in action and your melt/poor.

Awesome video you inspire me brother.

Beautifully done

Sooo addictive making such sexy copper bars!!!! Suggestion. When I do Aluminium melting, I usually place several pieces near the opening of the lid. This usually heat up the material and speed up the melting progress. Keep up this brilliant site of yours. Guys like you help a great deal with these videos for us here in South Africa

Alll said and done you poured some nice bars.

Love the ripple!

That is a beautiful ingot! I've melted a dozen or so 2lb bars, but have yet to pour one that looks that good!

Good Job!

I was just saying the other day how I was looking forward to seeing another one of your copper bar making videos. Awesome video! You should try your hand at some casting. You could make a cool eWaste Ben logo or maybe one for your business. There are some really cool videos out there on casting with copper.

Now that's a nice bar!!!

That is a beautiful bar, I love copper especially huge amounts like that. I have a neighbor just like you, I had a small, controlled fire in my yard once and had already put it out and was going inside and 3 fire trucks pulled up, running to me. I had no clue what they were there for and turned out they saw I did nothing wrong and were telling me the neighbor would be charged $$ if he called on me again.

that one turned out nice. ive seen the silver guys use the torch on top to make a pattern while pouring

I watched this while eating dinner. Good entertainment!

That came out perfectly

Feels good in the hand.

Great job mate - appreciate you sharing your nice set-up and cool pour. Sorry about the camera...

We are not worthy! U are the copper king bro!!!

you should do a vodeo of showing everyone all of your bins you have been putting away and stock piling. id love to see more melts. i would love to see these kinds of vids more often!

Beautifull bar ben, got pretty excited when i saw you finally fired up the furnace 👌 mint work, my brick furnace (not as good as yours) also takes around 40mins to get upto copper temps, so your doing pretty well as gas forges are pretty hard to tune (mines coal for aluminium and wast oil for copper) i think youve done real well as a first melt, you might want to look into forced air gas if you want to get your temps up quicker, its as simple as removing your air flow restrictor/tuner and duckt taping a hairdryer on it (use a dryer with a cool setting as they overheat if you dont) and playing around till you find the best gas to air ratio.... anyway love the vid and cheers for the inspo, im going to pour 5-10 kiloxs into 3.5kg copper bars so i can build a shiny brick doghouse as part of my hoard/stack.. i think it my most usefull method of storing my bullion lol..

Ben, you are heating up your mold with a mapp torch, why don't you put half on the hole on the lid? that will warm it nicely, but I doubt you will be able to melt iron in your furnace, you will need to use oil as a fuel.

13:50 looks amazing! Wondering, would a molten spill just run down the driveway catching stuff on fire? Lol, active imagination

What a beauty

Nice setup, here !!!! ...... :-D .. ...... Wow.

I am going to grab this forge through your link for christmas I think xD

I found it mate, thanks.

Nice video , great bar Ben. I would make more and hoard them in the form oh a little coppa house 🤩

You need a round mould then you can turn your block in a lathe super smooth and shiny.

Awesome.

beutiful Ben regards Tim

Do you ever sell the bars you make

Would an electric furnace be cheaper to run? Just thinking about the cost of all that gas

You poured a beautiful bar. My devil forge is pretty slow as well. I think the double burner model would be superior. I wonder if you left much copper in the bottom of the crucible? Thank you, LL

maybe the copper wire is some kind of alloy and the chunks you put on top of it is purer (so melts first). Beautiful chunk of copper

Ben, do you have a drawing for that crucible lifter\pourer? That looks great.

You need to start stripping more wire then melting the copper. I love watching it. Plus the silver & gold. I watch project shop FL & there's another guy in Australia that melts copper, brass, silver, gold, etc. I forget the name of the last guys channel but I use to watch him all the time. After a day's work, he sits down with his puppers & has a big beer. Maybe you've seen him & know his channel's name. I can't think of it 🤔 at the moment.

you can reduce the energy bill by using regenerative braking like sistems at the heat lost in furnace ...there is a lot of heat lost ready to be use there is a lot of processes that eliberate energy in a steel factory or other types of them ...energy that is lost and could be use to regenerate energy and reduce the energy bill

It takes longer the first batch because the furnace and crucible have to heat up. Doing a second you may find it will be a bit faster

Nice Koppah bar! Love that ripple pattern. I’ve recently started scrapping and have learned a lot from your videos. I plan to start melting soon too. What about some sort of protective clear coat to keep the beautiful shine from from oxidizing? Any suggestions?

Good one Ben. Aluminum next or brass? How about showing your stash of hand cast metal collection next “melt”?

What area are you in, MFB or CFA? I'd be checking out the restrictions in your area before your next melt

Call your local brigade and tell them your having a control burn in your garden they wont send a pump then.

I have been trying to think of a good product that you could make with your molten copper and aluminum. I would suggest soft hammers, used by machinists, thay have molds and kits for copper and lead hammers on ebay. Instead of hoarding your metals, add value by making something useful. Would make a nice video also. Thx for inspiring so many.

what would happen if you threw in tin coated wire? would the tin make a difference? or would it evaporate away

Shiny goodness :)

Great Video Ben nice to see the finished product out of the Furnace, the 10 lbs crucible is this the biggest one available for the hobbyist guy ? thanks for sharing buddy

Just a suggestion but you might could keep your molds warm with a hot plate or maybe a Bar-B-Que grill, it might work.

I saw someone making decorative items in graphite mold . they got the mold red hot before pouring in the silver . this seemed to let the metal run in and spread out nice and smoothly ?? prhaps it may work with copper ?? you could get the perfect bar ??

💪 😉 👍thanks

Your making me want to start melting my own copper

If you didn't know you shouldn't be pouring metals over a concrete floor if there is moisture trapped inside it will explode if you have an accident.

nice pour. there are youtube videos about making your own graphite molds the big thing needed is a hydraulic press a car jack would work the recipes are not hard.

Awesome! If I sent you a plaster mold, would you pour copper in it for me? And how much would it cost me?

a fun thing to do is pour the molten copper in a big tank of water and make mini globs of copper

the big bar is just shy of 29 usa dollars as of todays date. it looks too nice to sell.

If ONLY it was GOLD !

Niceee and shinyyy

What price are your gas bottles in Oz? They are 25 Euros here in Portugal.

Why don't you make a rack to hold the molds over the hole in the forge and then move them when it's time to pour ?

Sprinkle some borax on the bar while it's cooling it will stay shiny and not oxidise.

I watched this video about 7 or 8 times

That sparkle tho

need to open up that air flow to increase the flame

I like videos on coppa

the important thing with air filter masks when working with fumes is a charcoal filter, most masks are only made for dust, but really you could adapt any cheap mask by making up a charcoal filter. very important when using acids for recovery, you never know when things will get out of hand, I've gotten more then a lung full of gases that could kill, if you ever do, remember to force as much air out of your lungs as possible and leaving the area before trying to breathe in. I also drink charcoal or food grade clay water after I do something careless.

... c o o l !!!

Very nice. Do you understand what the cause is for the grooves on the bottom of the ingot? Other casters get them as well.

You should make a Ben bust and put it on display beside Your Abe bust .

Hi Ben love your vids they are cool only complaint I have is u do not showcase your artwork could b your next vid maybe keep up the great work mate

Very nice. How much did it cost in gas ?

Looks good. It looked like you didn't get a full heat through the crucible because it's too big for the furnace, or you need a bigger furnace. It didn't seem to have a nice glow and that's a hell of a long time. Just a suggestion as I had the same problem until I increased the furnace size. But reducing the crucible will improve things greatly. You'll see what I mean. Still great mate.

how do you get the copper pour so clean mine always is dirty lots of white powdery stuff on top? and when i pour it seems like it cools to fast and yours runs like water? HELP?

Went on line for that smelter in America there $625.00 from Amazon

BEN, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT PEWTER ? I HAVE BEN MAKING SMALL INGOTS BUT NEVER HAD SOLD THEM.'' DO YOU THINK IT HAS ANY PURPOSE IN MAKING LARGER BARS ?

Neighbors called the coppa's on you!