Not all brass is the same

The entrance way hardware on your home may seem like a small detail. In reality it is an important consideration.

When deciding on hardware for your home, brass is always a good selection. It is available in many finishes, has a long life and is easily maintained.

Before you purchase, you must be prepared for some surprises, you see, not all brass is the same.

The first thing to be sure of is that your purchase is in fact brass. Modern methods have become quite proficient in plating brass over less expensive metals such and making it look convincingly like the part is made of solid brass . This is especially hard to detect when purchasing packaged items.

Brass is primarily an alloy of copper and zinc. Not only can the proportions of the copper and the zinc be altered, other ingredients such as tin, nickel and or lead may be added in varying proportions to make the finished product cheaper or better suited for a specific job.

This is one of the reasons that the brass valve for your garden hose may not be the same color or texture as the brass that makes up your door knocker. While both are made of brass, the composition of the brass in each product is different.

In our case at Your-Door-Knocker.com, we do not produce water valves, we produce quality ornamental parts such as door knockers. We require brass that is conducive to molding and will machine and finish well.  Our parts must stand up well in the outdoors , in direct sunlight and be resistant to the weather. In short our brass is more expensive than the brass used for water valves.

We do not need to be chemists to purchase the correct brass. Brass has been around a long time. Industry standards and specifications have been written and proven worthy. These specifications provide the foundries and the manufacturers with a common language which ensures the correct grade material is being purchased.

There are manufacturers that attempt to lessen the manufacturing cost of their products by altering the chemical makeup of their brass. For example, zinc is cheaper than copper so the higher the zinc content, the cheaper the brass will be. Unfortunately, once the zinc content passes the optimum amount the quality of the finished product will suffer.

For a manufacturer of quality products it is simply not worth it to cut a couple cents per pound from the casting brass cost. While a door knocker made of quality material may cost a bit more, the longevity of the item will certainly make it the better value in the long run.