German Silver From Coins. Melting Nickel Silver and Casting Bars

The reason of this article and video is to show how to get high quality copper alloy which looks like silver for your projects. This alloy was created in 19th century specially to replace silver or at least to make metal which looks like silver and has similar characteristics. That's why German metallurgist using Chinese alloy created this alloy which was called German Silver or Nickel Silver.

Nikel Silver was popular metal for producing coins. Now more and more countries are using cheaper metals and alloys but you still can use some old coins. In my case, I used old USSR coins which are made of 58% copper, 30% zinc and 12% nickel. To buy 1kg of these coins I've spent about 5 USD. In my opinion that's not expensive.

Starting up a furnace

We need to reach 1200 °C (2192 °F).

When we reached temperature it's time for casting.

I'm not sure if the temperature 1200 °C was reached. It looks like the temperature was a little bit lower.

After brushing, sanding and machining we see that metal looks like silver. Hardness test shows that this metal is soft and can be used probably only for decorative purposes. I'm definitely going to use it in my future projects.

Good luck in melting and casting! :)