Best Available Sheet brass to Match the color of Cast Brass

[Natebanton]

Hello Amazing group of engineers.

I'm not exactly an engineer, just a bagpipe maker. I use cast pieces of brass in my work. The alloy is 80% Copper, 15% Zinc, 5% Tin. I often pair these cast pieces with both brass tubing and brass sheet. I know I won't match the color exactly without using the same alloy, but that alloy doesn't seem to be available in these other forms.

This may be an impossible thing to answer, but I'm wondering if you could help me understand what gives the brass it's color so I can make the best choice for matching the casting alloy.

For example, most brass alloys don't seem to have tin in them. But there are some that have a small amount of tin (1%), but then the copper content is generally lower (60-70%) and the zinc content is higher (30-40%). Do I want to simply try to find an alloy with the highest copper content to match best, or is the tin content an important factor?

Any thoughts, especially specific recommendations would be helpful.

Cheers! Nate Banton

 

[EdStainless]

Bronze is a family of alloys based on copper+tin.
Brass are alloys that are based on copper+zinc.
Getting high Cu is likely the key to the color, but alloys with Sn vs Zn will look different.
There are wrought brass alloys closer to your castings.
You might be able to find some help here:

https://www.copper.org/resources/

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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube

 

[btrueblood]

Match the zinc+tin content. I.e. find an alloy with zinc + tin roughly equal to 20% if you can. Frankly, 10-30% zinc alloys will be close enough. You won't get a perfect color match, but then I'd bet you don't have perfect color reproducibility with the cast parts either, and none of them will have the same color after a few years of oxidation and tarnish.