What would happen if I melt it?
Don't think you can melt down artifacts. Can send it to the bridge for destruction though. With the maker.
EDIT
In the lovely corrosion mod settlement of Fallenrock, a group of common thugs decided to raid the place the first year. I being lucky and partly thinking ahead, got a man with a crossbow and bolts for the summer migrants, and brought two bronze crowbars to ward off wildlife.
The group was lead by a nondescript hammerwoman who used a small clawhammer to beat an herbalist to death just outside the settlement, the death witnessed by a carpenter working on erecting a simple palisade to keep things out. This Herbalist was given the name of Tina Flores. Her Husband, Kennith Flores the thresher, didn't respond well to his wife's murder. So he grabbed a crowbar and a nearby fellow named Andrew, and the recent arrival with the crossbow, a man named Levi, and proceeded to lead them to where his wife had died. At this point, the trio had the settlement's only weapons besides the two shovels and hatchets that were in use by other workers and were outnumbered roughly 5-1, as the group attacking was 16 strong.
Andrew proceeded to kill one intruder in a oneshot and hold two others at bay while Kennith took out another with a couple blows to the body (shattering multiple ribs each time,) and a headshot. He then targeted the hammerwoman (by sheer dumb luck as there were three other available targets,) and after disarming her with a counterstrike, proceeded to beat her to death slowly and horribly, effectively rendering her down to a vaguely human-shaped bag of meat after breaking so many bones before killing her. Levi meanwhile, had fired several shots into the fight, hitting the two attacking Andrew twice apiece (thug 1 got a bolt to the foot and gut, 2 got shot in their weapon arm and in their right shin,) and missing twice completely. Thug 2 proceeded to pass out due to pain from chipped arm and leg bones and got her head smashed in by Andrew, while Thug 1 was attacked from the side by Kennith, whereupon he got similar treatment to the hammerwoman before Kennith got the killshot.
By this point due to several casualties and thier leader dying, the bulk are running for their lives. Andrew chased one down, hooking his leg which lead to a second round of two on one crowbar beatings and a crossbowbolt for added insult before Andrew finished him with a kick to the head. We now have many steel-varient and bronze beating implements to arm the community with, but we've also lost a recent arrival and the only decent herbalist to boot. Kennith is unhappy of course, but he has gained enough skill to become a maceman rather than recruit with stupidly good luck.
To combat his sadness, there's already a small eatery set up with plenty of dingo-based stews and roasts (A pack of dingos picked a fight with a trio of local alligators. Ended as well as you'd expect for them, used autodump to retrieve the corpses for meat,) along with plentiful barely bread, an ok amount of vodka and beer left from initial embark and a well for when that runs out already set up. He's also been given a private cot in the bunk house to slightly soften the blow. Plus he got a good thought for the kills he made.
All in all, could have been way worse and the simple dumb luck of the enemy commander dying and more than half of the enemy troops lagging behind may have been what stopped a total party kill from happening. At least come the next round, the pallisade will be up and they'll be fighting on our terms, and next time Levi won't be the only one firing into them.