Making Red Tombac of Paris - Alpha Brass - Copper, Zinc and Lead

Today I show how to make Red Tombac of Paris. Tombac is a high copper alpha brass with zinc percentages of up to 20%. Tombac often contains other metals such as arsenic, lead and tin. Making Red Tombac of Paris is fairly easy, it contains 90% copper, 8% zinc and 2% lead. It's a nice golden colour with dark streaks. The zinc I am using is military spec pure zinc with a low cadmium content of 0.025% and 99.85% pure copper pipe. The flux is Ecopure 524 formerly known as B505, it is a refine and cover flux suitable for zinc copper alloys, brass, gunmetal and tin. The lead used are off cuts from lead sheet. Tombac is just another name for brass. Although the term tombac usually refers to high copper brasses with less than 20% zinc, often lower. An alpha brass contain less than 37% zinc and is more resistant to corrosion than regular brass. The furnace is a Devil Forge FB2M 10kg furnace. This melt was just a colour test to see if this red tombac has a deep enough red colour to use as the red pieces for the backgammon set I am making. The brass ingot shows the colour of the metal well. I won't be using this metal for the backgammon counters as this was too yellow for what I am looking for. I will probably go for pure copper and pure zinc for the counters to ensure they have a similar weight. I have decided to patina the copper counters with liver of sulphur and inlay them with gold leaf on the faces. Hope you enjoy the video, don't forget to like and subscribe. See you on the next one. Cheers all, have a great day. Andy