Is this brass or bronze?

Lon Aguiar

Lon Aguiar

Joined
May 23, 2007
Messages
96
This had been sitting in my folk's basement for the past thirty or so years. My dad worked at a power plant and this was from a bearing that came out of a piece of machinery. He couldn't remember what it came out of but he did say that it was lined with rubber this was the "shell". When the rubber wore out they would replace the bearing and throw these away. I am trying to figure out if it is brass or bronze. It is 16.5" tall, 7.875" wide and the walls are .4375" thick. It weighs around 40 lbs.. I am thinking it is bronze. It isn't that tarnished and doesn't have that "dirty" look that brass gets. I polished a section with Simichrome and the color didn't really change. The bar on top is a piece of brass that I got from TKS for comparison. Any ideas on what it could be?

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc319/aussiecapri/IMG_0877.jpg

Thanks!
Lon
 
Definitely “not portable”. It came out of a big piece of equipment in the plant. I was thinking aluminum bronze too. I know it’s impossible to tell exactly what it is just by looking at it. Just wanted to make sure it isn’t brass. Now I need to figure out how to cut it up into something usable for guards and bolsters.
 
Take it to a metal shop and they can use a big band saw to cut it into bands as wide as you can handle. Then you can cut the bands up and with an anneal you can flatten and have bars.
 
Lon, you coming to IG's hammerin or the NECKA one?

I would take a small chunk out of it, melt it with an acetelyne torch (put some borax on it as a a flux) and see if it fumes. Make sure you are upwind of it and you are outside. If it gives off a white smoke stop immediately, that's probably zinc, you've got brass.
if it melts cleanly into a blob you have something castable, probably bronze but it may be a castable alloy of brass, either way if you're coming to one of the hammerins I could show you how to do sandcasting, it's not as high a quality as lost wax but unless you have a milling machine and lathe it's probably the best way to deal with copper alloys.

-Page
 
Page,

I will be at the NECKA hammer in. I wanted to try to go to IG's but I am moving that weekend. Unfortunately, I do not have an acetylene torch. I like the idea of cutting it up into bands and flattening them into bars. Sand casting would be cool. I haven't done that since shop class in junior high. If I can get it cut up I will bring some to the hammer in.

Thanks,

Lon
 
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