What metal do you think these are made from? Furnace tool..

From my dead friends shed clear out. Pouring pots.
Quite heavy and thick.
I worked on a large annealing furnace many years ago and the castings to be annealed were stacked in baskets made(I was told) of gun metal to withstand the continuous heat over hundreds of cycles without sagging and going all melty melty.
I know when they scrapped the furnace the baskets fetched big money.
These things I've got look like the same gun metal stuff to me. Trying to raise funds for his wife.

Gunmetal is a form of bronze, (lead instead of zinc) can you take a file to it and see if it reveals a colour?

Some sort of refractory material, like the stuff they line blast furnaces with?

That's a clay type stuff though or it used to be anyways. This has the weight of cast iron but hasn't gone rusty in his damp shed.

Flossie said:

That's a clay type stuff though or it used to be anyways. This has the weight of cast iron but hasn't gone rusty in his damp shed.

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Yeah, I know.
If they are for bronze, then quite a few metals melt above bronze melting temperature.

Might be for lead. Did he do any sea fishing?

Al2O3 said:

Might be for lead. Did he do any sea fishing?

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I've turned up a box full of obviously home made lead fishing weights and some brass chess pieces again obviously home made.

Flossie said:

I've turned up a box full of obviously home made lead fishing weights and some brass chess pieces again obviously home made.

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Interesting fella. Obviously a top man
I was initially thinking of cast iron or aluminium, but lead, brass and bronze have lower melting points. Still don't know what it is though Is it magnetic?

The crucibles and pouring pots we used to use were all made of steel or cast iron. We did have a few “soecial” crucibles that could hold around 70-80kg of molten Babbitt, but they only weighed around 5-10kg. We were only casting Babbitt metals, upto around 500deg, so could possibly be something with a higher melting point.

Those are most likely cast iron pouring crucibles. They're worth more as pouring crucibles, instead of weighing them in.

I will try a magnet on them when I've time, seems the next logical step.

Flossie said:

I will try a magnet on them

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Magnetic attraction will be low, as they'll likely be a mix of iron and graphite.

Judging by the colour and texture they look like there's a lot of graphite in the mix so they should be good up to 1650 Celsius. In which case you can melt most ferrous metals (assuming you have a furnace of course) as well as all the non ferrous ones. Gunmetal, as said above is typically a mixture of non-ferrous metals, mainly copper, but with proportions of tin and zinc and occasionally lead, depending on the specification being worked to. That melts at around 1000 C, so would be good for some alloys. But they look like a graphite mix to me.

Have you got a furnace? Let's have some pictures!

No furnace. That's all there is.
For sale- get yer wallet out