How long take to melt copper?

The actual melting point of copper is 1083 degrees Celsius. For those of us who still use Fahrenheit, it's 1985 degrees. That is considerably hot by any standard. If you do melt copper, or any other metal, please be very careful and know what you are doing. I would use a kiln or foundry. You can, of course, look up which you would prefer, as there are many kinds. Once you have a heat source you're going to need the actual metal. As far as copper goes, you CAN use scrap, and perhaps, if you dare to break federal law, pennies made before 1982 which contain 5% zinc. The newer pennies are almost completely zinc covered in a thin layer of copper. However, if I were looking to go more high end on the copper, I would want a .999/99.9% purity. This will be hard to achieve with pennies and scrap, so the best bet would be to get copper shots. You can actually buy them at http://www.bullioncopper.com the cost is $3.70/pound, and there is a minimum of 10lbs to buy with a max of 55lbs. So, all in all, maybe $37.00 to get 10 lbs worth of 99.9% pure copper shots. As mentioned before, you'll want to wear protective gear when doing this. I'm sure you have burned yourself on grease from cooking before, and that's just a few hundred degrees.