im making something that needs to be made of a soft metal for practical reasons, but copper is now expensive. i know brass is similar, but is it as soft? any other similarly soft metals?
Nothing cheaper than copper that I know of. If you can heat it, iron becomes soft, and is cheap. Lead is very soft, and toxic too, aluminium is brittle. Maybe bronze, or an aluminium alloy ?
id say aluminium, brass is good but hard to get hold of. you could go for mild steel or zinc but there not really any good to you. erm try nickel or colbalt you never know they may fit the bill.
no Brass is a hard metal Tin , Alum, & copper,& lead are the only soft metals
You can buy sheets of thin aluminum at Home Depot. They are 3' X 3' and are under $10. Lead is softer than copper in malleability, but not weight. Lead is not cheap either.
There are many metals that are as soft or softer than copper. But are more expensive than copper. Gold, lead, tin, bismuth, for example. You might try zink but I don't know where you can find it. Brass is generally harder than copper. It is an alloy (mix) of zink and copper. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. They are both harder than the metals alone. When you work copper, brass, and other nonferrous metals it hardens. This is called work hardening. To make it soft again, heat it until it is a dull red color and drop it in water right away to cool it. This will turn the outside black and must be polished back to the copper/brass color but it will be as soft as it can get. You can try aluminum but it is much harder to work with than copper. Depending on what you do with it.
