Alternatively, strike the metal against a hard surface and listen to the sound. Copper will have a soft, muted sound, whereas brass will emit a clear, ringing tone. For more advice, including how to tell brass from copper by checking for stamped codes, keep reading.
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Cookie Settings. Learn why people trust wikiHow. Download Article Explore this Article methods. Tips and Warnings. Related Articles. Article Summary. Method 1. Clean the metal if necessary. Both brass and copper develop a patina with age, usually green but sometimes other colors. These typically work for both metals, but to be safe you could use a commercial brass and copper cleaning product.
Hold the metal under white light. If the metal is highly polished, you may see false colors due to reflected light. Identify copper's reddish color. Copper is a pure metal, and always has a reddish brown appearance. A modern US penny is plated in copper and was almost entirely copper from to , so this is a good point of comparison.
Inspect yellow brass. The word brass refers to any alloy that contains copper and zinc. Different proportions of these metals produce different colors, but the most common types of brass have a muted yellow color, or a yellow-brown appearance similar to bronze.
These brass alloys are widely used in machined parts and screws. Some brass has a greenish-yellow appearance, but this alloy, called "gilding metal," is only used for a few specialized purposes in decoration and ammunition. Learn about red or orange brass. Any hint of orange, yellow, or gold means the item is brass, not copper. If the brass alloy is almost entirely copper, you may need to compare it side by side with a copper pipe or item of jewelry.
If you're still not sure, it's either copper or brass with such a high copper content that the distinction may not be important. Identify other brass. Brass with high zinc content can look bright gold, yellowish white, and even white or grey. Method 2. Strike the metal and listen to the sound. Since copper is quite soft, it should produce a muted, round sound. This works best for thick, solid metal objects. Look for stamped codes. It was this issue that caused me to look at the compositions when I realised that some of our suppliers were not fully clued up on the subject.
Having said the above about suitability with steam, I presume that bronze castings are a simple gun metal and its use in cylinder castings works without problems. Colphos 90 and SAE are regarded as bearing bronzes and you can see that their composition is similar. I understand that the aluminium bronzes are potentially hard, have come about from aerospace technology and are probably best avoided by us.
PB machines ok and silver solders nicely, but it can be fussy about drilling and is difficult to ream. Colphos 90 and SAE will also silver solder well and are that bit easier softer when machining. I first met aluminium bronze in the form of a tube of rather pretty swarf in practical examination 65 years ago.
The 7 hours task this was day one only! Then to devise methods for determining how much of each. I can't remember the answers but the donuts and mugs of tea distributed by the laboratory staff are still the highlights of a wearying day! My father in law who worked as metallurgist in 13 year in Dnepr motorcycle factory in Kyiv. He told the bronze bearings in the motorcycle was made of gram copper and 15 gram tin. First melt the copper then soak the bit of tin into the molten copper to prevent the tin is evaporated away from copper and stirr well before poring.
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News from advertisers in Our Magazines and Website. John Any tips you may have for machining aluminium bronze would be most useful. Magazine Locator. So perhaps this is brass and not bronze. Oh well, if the flange is brass or bronze it won't really matter.
But would like to make an educated guess on whether this stuff is brass or bronze. Any way I can be able to make an educated guess at this?
Densitys look to be pretty close to each other. When you turn bronze the chips are almost like dust. Found this. It says bronze drill chips are stringy. Whereas brass is flaky. I have turned and drilled a lot of brass and I know how that behaves. How its grabby on a drill bit. But there are numerous alloys of each and they all behave differently.
My guess is that if you put the hydrochloric acid on it, it will go pink if it's brass. I'm basing that on the fact that over time this happens to brass fasteners in a marine environment. The chlorides in seawater fizz away the zinc and leave a spongy copper substrate which falls apart if you put it under any stress. Bronze has no zinc. I emphasise that this is just a hunch, but someone else here will know, or you could craft a Google search using 'de-zincification' 'brass' 'hydrochloric' and other terms in various combinations till you hit the jackpot.
Brass will generally be yellow in color where as bronze will be redder in color. Originally Posted by Troup.
Not to thread hijack, or anything, but this has raised my curiosity My nephew has been using my garage toys to make a model steam powered engine for the experience of making it whilst doing an engineering course at the local college. We have made some parts out of, what I have been told, is "Aluminium bronze" got it from the college , namely the cylinder and big end connector. Again, college donated some material to the project. Thanks, Chris.
Originally Posted by DazedConfused.
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