Soften pewter with a soldering iron?

The line between pliable and liquified is very quick when trying to do something like this. Unless you have an adjustable iron and can set the heat fairly low, the risks of liquifying the figure's arm are fairly high.  If all you need to do is adjust the elbow, the safer way would be to take a razor saw and make one or more shallow cuts into the elbow, and carefully bend the cuts closed.

Yes, either melting or cutting seems to be very tricky.

It is my understanding that pewter is mainly tin, which is pliable, but has other metals mixed into it to harden it.  If I go the cutting route, then I guess there is a chance that when I bend that arm in by about 45 degrees, it will snap off.

On the other hand, it appears that modern pewter will soften at about 475 degrees F, and liquifies at 550 degrees F.

Since I know my little soldering iron can burn paper, then it must be at least 451 degrees F, and perhaps even much higher.

I think that I am going to take a chance on the using the soldering iron.  I will replace the iron tip with a very thin iron nail,  and put the heated iron on the inside of the figures elbow joint, not continually, but on for a bit and then off for a couple of seconds, then on for a bit, then off for a few seconds, to see if it will reach a point where I can gently push the arm inward.

Happily, the figure only cost me $12.00, so if the solder iron technique doesn't work, I can buy another and try the cutting method.

Thanks for helping me brainstorm on this problem.

I will follow up to let you know what happens.

Mannyrock

Let us know how it goes.

One thought: If the arm DOES break, you could try repairing/repositioning it using something like JB-weld, followed by repainting.

In part it depends on how far the arm needs to be bent ?  If it's not too much, Boilermakers1 idea of undercutting the arm seems preferable.  Pewter is soft and the stress concentrations left by the cut arm are mitigated since you're compressing the cut.  Heating the figure will disfigure the paint.  If the arm breaks, a little filling and some glue may reposition the arm with minimum damage to the paint.

Hello Folks,

Here is a long overdue follow-up, to my attempt to bend the arm of a pewter figure inward, by using heat from a soldering iron.

I took my soldering iron, removed the tip, and put a 6 penny finish nail in its place.  I only had about one -half inch of the nail sticking out of the end of the unit.

I let that thing heat up for 15 minutes, until it would scorch wood or set paper on fire.

Then I put the iron on the inside of the figure's arm, to soften up the pewter so that I could bend the arm inward.

You may recall that the figure was a pre-painted Artista man.

I left the red hot iron on that arm for 10 minutes.  And guess what happened.

NOTHING!  That's what.  The pewter never softened in any respect.  What is more surprising is that a black "soot' built up on the painted arm, but when the arm cooled, the soot wiped off and the paint appeared unblemished!!

Geez, what a failure.

What I finally did was take my Dremel took, and insert a thin, metal cutting wheel in it, which is fiberglass reinforce.

I very very carefully sawed through two thirds of the outside of the arm, not the inside, and applied gentle pressure inward, in the opposite direction of the cut.  (I sawed the outside of the arm instead of the inside, because the wheel was too big to get into the tight inside elbow of the arm.)

After I sawed through two thirds of the arm, I very very gently applied even pressure to the arm, pushing it inward, and it bent very slowly inward.  I was holding my breath the entire time, waiting for the metal to "snap" and the arm to fall off.  But it didn't.  (I felt like I was performing heart surgery!)

After the arm was bent in, I was left with a big open V-cut on the outside of the elbow.    So, I mixed a tiny ball of JB Weld, from the tootsie roll type, and quickly filled in the cut and blended it all around the elbow.  The figure is wearing a loose gray coat, so the dark gray Weld blends in fairly well.   It hardened like a rock, all of the way around, so the arm is probably very secure.

I hope that the foregoing will be useful to anyone who may need to adjust the limbs of a pewter figure.  I certainly benefited from all of the suggestions that were posted.

I do want to repaint the figures gray coat, to something more colorful, like dark blue or dark green.

So, has anybody tried to paint hardened JB Weld?      Since it is really an epoxy, I'm not sure that any oil based primer would stick. I know that many folks like flat gray automobile primer, and I have a can, but again, it is oil based.

Thanks,

Mannyrock

You’re just painting a figure for your layout, no need to primer …..touch the figure up, and roll on with your work.

Pat

Hi Manny,

Congratulations on successfully accomplishing your goal.  There probably wasn't enough surface contact to transfer the heat from the iron to the figure.  When soldering, you need to have a small blob of molten solder on the tip of your iron to ensure that you have enough surface area contact to transfer the heat.  However, I think your solution was perfect.  Let us know how the painting comes out.

John

@Mannyrock I have painted/touched up JB Weld before with whatever I had on the workbench...I can't recall if it was Floquil or Polly S or Testors.

Thanks for attempting this and then posting about it, as I've recently bought a few Arttista figures recently.

If you are able to, can you take a photo of the figure before you paint it so we see how it looks now.

Tom

PS- I found this older topic by using the Search tool...

https://ogrforum.com/...ing-arttista-figures

Tom