How do I get melted metal off of a glass cooktop? Please help!

I am a natural disaster in human form. My latest fiasco is to melt one of my roommate's had-since-college keepsakes to his super-expensive glass cooktop stove. I think it is pewter. How do I fix this? Please help me, DU! You're my only hope!

Tucker

given, I do need more information.

I am assuming that the pewter artifact is still stuck to the stove...if you can only save one (which seems to me likely) are you trying to save the stovetop or the keepsake? (Personally, I'd try to save the keepsake...the cooking-range can be fixed, even if you have to breakdown and replace the glass cooktop. (depending on make and model, somewhere between $200 (likely) to $1500 for parts (I'd wager that unless he's a chef that he doesn't have a custom $10,000 stove in a shared kitchen...so we can pretty much assume it won't be towards the high end of that range.))

I need to save the cooktop. I should also mention that getting more than $150 together right now would be impossible for me, as I have no job and no income, and have been living off of my roommate's (fraying) generosity for months now.

Tucker

Generally Darkstar has the right idea, you need to get the range just hot enough that the metal peels off. I'd probably borrow a soldering iron though and go about it that way. Warm a section, take it off, repeat. Much more time and labor intensive but less likely to go wrong...which will happen if the stove gets too hot. Pewter is mostly lead so it doesn't require a lot of heat to melt or soften. Just be careful to not scratch the glass, once you scratch it, its garbage...you'll never get the scratches out and whatever gets placed or spilled on the scratch will stick and not come up.

1. Chisel it off and then do what you need to refinish the cooktop.
2. Get yourself a throw-away spatula made of something thermal safe AND WIDE ENOUGH TO GET UNDER THE ENTIRE PUDDLE. Turn the cooktop AND THE FAN on and SLOWLY reheat the pewter. You need to keep an eye on it. You're trying to go for the opposite of a flippable pancake: hot and soft on the bottom, but still pretty solid on the top so that the whole puddle sticks together. As soon as you get it to that point, get the spatula under it and lift away.

At least, that's what works with wax puddles and several other solidifying messes.

Pewter melts at a lower temperature than glass, and glass is usually fairly slick. There's not a lot of surface imperfections for the pewter to seep into.

I would first try getting perhaps a block of wood with a fairly sharp cut (like a 2x4) and butting it up against the pewter then tapping it (the wood) a few times with a hammer. The mess might well just pop off after a couple of hits.

:shrug:

Just start gently and work your way up. Glass is fairly tough, so you can hit the wood fairly sharptly, I would think.

Own up to it. Tell your roommate you effed up and that you will find a way to pay him back via a payment agreement. And then follow through on that payment agreement.

This will take loads of stress off of you, and it is the decent thing to do.

I had a teakettle that ran out of water before I realized it. When I turned the stove off, the cooling difference between the metal and the glass caused the top to crack in two. (I should have removed the kettle from the stove)
I'd recommend going really slow as per other responses-or calling out a repair person. That way if it breaks then, you may save/share the cost of a top.
Either way, good luck!

the roommate than the stove

But you're certainly not the only person who ever did this, so there's gotta be somebody in the workaday world who has a bit of experience (successful or not) in trying to undo this: look in the phone book for folk who services this particular brand/model of stove, and explain what they did. If the response is merely riotous laughter, move on in the phonebook

If that doesn't work, contact the manufacturer and ask for advice

If contacting professionals doesn't help, you might try to remove it yourself, but this is risky: you want to try to warm the metal very slowly and hope! hope! hope! that it softens and loosens a bit before it actually remelts. Decide in advance how and where you're moving it (maybe into a sink full of water) it loosens, and try to have some plan about what to do if it melts. This is hazardous, because you're either gonna have a hot piece of soft metal or a puddle of liquid metal on the stove top, which will present any nearby klutzes with numerous opportunities to burn the holy crap out of themselves or accidentally set the counters on fire or ruin plastic stove parts or spatter sizzling drops into eyes or something. So if you really go the do-it-yourself route, wear eye protection and cover skin and keep a dry powder fire extinguisher nearby and have somebody sitting by the phone in another room ready to call 911. You may want to pull the stove out of its counter slot before trying to soften/melt it: if so, when reinserting the stove into the slot you'll need top be sure the anti-tip features engage

In any case: don't get in a hurry, and don't use the burner or burners that are affected unless you have a coherent plan

they should be able to direct you to an appliance repair service. Then give them a call for advice. Once again, be VERY careful if you try to remove it yourself. My new stove top replacement cost was approx. $700, but luckily it was still under warranty so I paid $150 for the labor...

Must be Homecoming Week around here. (Hope we scheduled East Cupcake State for the game. :-) ) Plaid Adder turned up yesterday. Now this. :bounce:

Please, please don't feel you have to melt something in order to drop by and say Hi! :-)

I even had a real job!

Things are weird, again, but...eh, more later about that, I don't have my real job so I have excess time to DU again.

Tucker

It is a form of low quality (commerce grade) concentrated HCl, hydrochloric acid. Do not get it on anything else. Use an eye dropper to place it on the metal. The metal will fizz (and if it stops doing so add more acid.)

Before wiping up the solution, neutralize it with ordinary baking soda. This should work fine.

Neutralize any left over muriatic acid by carefully - very very very very slowly, adding it to baking soda. You will need a large box of baking soda to do this. It can be done in any kind of glass container. It may also be neutralized by adding waste aluminum to the left over muriactic acid, but the reaction will generate hydrogen gas which is flammable. It may also be neutralized by dissolving waste concrete in it.

If you are clumsy, I suggest wearing safety glasses for the entire procedure.

which is why it is sold in hardware stores.

I've worked with lots of concentrated acids in my life time, including neat liquified hydrofluoric acid, HF.

HF is probably one of the scariest compounds with which I've worked, and it's nothing like HCl. HF would be a very bad choice in this situation since it dissolves glass and must be handled in polyethlene or Monel metal apparatus.

Actually the Mobil refinery on Crenshaw Blvd near the bedroom community of Torrance (and Lomita) handled multi-ton quantities of HF, even though an active earthquake fault runs pretty much down the double yellow line on said road.

It all depends on what you're used to.

Dissolve the metal but leave the glass intact!


Hmmmm... perhaps a ring of baking soda around the metal lump should be placed there first, to catch any drippage?

I'm thinking the glass cooking top won't be safe to use if you do get it off.