[TheForge] Bronze for forging

[ries]

There are a few things that will work.
The best alloy for forging is silicon bronze- C655.
But it is a very dark brownish-red color, not what many people think of when they think of bronze.
It is almost all copper, with a bit of silicon, so it forges pretty nicely, its actually pretty hard, takes almost as much work as steel to forge it.

If you must have a golden yellow color, I would suggest something like naval bronze C464- it has a bit of the nasties in it- zinc - but not too much, and it still is very forgeable. 

the more lead in there, the worse it is- by the time you get to something like architectural bronze, C385, at 3% lead, its really treacherous to forge- mostly you end up with crumbled cookie dough that cost a lot of money and is totally unusable.

I have a friend who says he has succesfully forged some of the aluminum bronzes- but I have never tried em.

ries



On Aug 30, 2010, at 6:50 AM, williamsiron at comcast.net wrote:




I have an order to make some spears for a bronze statue. I thought to make them similar to making a leaf. However, I don't know what kind of bronze to use as it needs to be forged. What do you recommend? 



Mark Williams 

Snow Hill, Maryland 
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Ries Niemi
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http://www.riesniemi.com/