Modern Items Commonly Made of Bronze

 

Art and Sculpture

Just like in ancient times, bronze is one of the preferred materials for sculpture and statues. Bronze is both easier to work with than other metals and also more durable. Public art pieces, such as statuary, are often made with bronze because of its longevity and resistance to the elements. Statuary bronze is usually made with 97 percent copper, two percent tin, and one percent zinc.

Musical Instruments

Bells and cymbals are often made with bronze; for bells, a special “bell metal” alloy is used, which is made with a high percentage of tin. Asian percussion instruments, like gongs and singing bowls, are also made with bronze in varying compositions.

Bronze is also used in string instruments, including the guitar, double bass, and piano, for the windings of steel and nylon strings. Bronze strings are used for tones with lower pitches, where they perform better than their high-tensile steel counterparts.

Coins and Medals

There is, of course, the bronze medal that is traditionally awarded for third place in a competition, but bronze is used to make a variety of medals and plaques for many different purposes. Commemorative coins may be made with bronze too, although coins used for currency are not typically made with bronze in modern times. During the 1800s, United States pennies were made with bronze, and in the United Kingdom, one and two pence coins were made with bronze until the early 1990s.

Architectural Bronze

Bronze has many architectural uses, ranging from everyday items like mailboxes, furniture, and stair railings, to more elaborate ornamental items like decorative cladding on doors and windows. Not only does bronze stand the test of time in these applications, but it comes in a range of colors that makes it desirable as well. Bronze used for architecture is an alloy made with 57 percent copper, 40 percent zinc, and three percent lead. 

Commercial Bronze

It’s difficult to find an industry where bronze isn’t used! We use items made with bronze daily without even thinking about it. Bearings, bushings, screws, valves, and countless other parts are made with bronze because of its strength, durability, resistance to corrosion, and ductility. Wrought alloys are available in sheets and plates, rods, tubes, or bar stock and are produced by rolling and extrusion mills or by a forging mill. In contrast, cast alloys are produced by sand casting, centrifugal casting, and continuous casting. They are the most readily available type of bronze alloy.

Bronze medal

 

A bronze medal in sports and other similar areas involving competition is a medal made of bronze awarded to the third-place finisher of contests or competitions such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, etc. The outright winner receives a gold medal and the second place a silver medal. More generally, bronze is traditionally the most common metal used for all types of high-quality medals, including artistic ones. The practice of awarding bronze third place medals began at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, Missouri, before which only first and second places were awarded.

Is Bronze an element?

 

Brass and bronze are made up of varying amounts of metals, depending on how it is made. The elements are not bonded in constant ratios, much like the raisins and flakes in Raisin Bran. Therefore, brass and bronze are simply mixtures of elements. Metal mixtures are called alloys.

History of Bronze

 

The discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects that were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons, armor, and building materials such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone and copper ("Chalcolithic") predecessors. Initially, bronze was made out of copper and arsenic, forming arsenic bronze, or from naturally or artificially mixed ores of copper and arsenic, with the earliest artifacts so far known coming from the Iranian plateau in the 5th millennium BCE. It was only later that tin was used, becoming the major non-copper ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BCE.

Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the alloying process could be more easily controlled, and the resulting alloy was stronger and easier to cast. Also, unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic. The earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BCE in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik (Serbia).[9] Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BCE in Egypt, Susa (Iran) and some ancient sites in China, Luristan (Iran) and Mesopotamia (Iraq).[citation needed]

Ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not often found together (exceptions include Cornwall in Britain, one ancient site in Thailand and one in Iran), so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a major influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a major source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall, which were traded as far as Phoenicia in the eastern Mediterranean.

In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artifacts are found, suggesting that bronze also represented a store of value and an indicator of social status. In Europe, large hoards of bronze tools, typically socketed axes (illustrated above), are found, which mostly show no signs of wear. With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources, the case is clear. These were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, and also used by the living for ritual offerings.

Transition to iron

Though bronze is generally harder than wrought iron, with Vickers hardness of 60–258 vs. 30–80, the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age after a serious disruption of the tin trade: the population migrations of around 1200–1100 BCE reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean and from Britain, limiting supplies and raising prices. As the art of working in iron improved, iron became cheaper and improved in quality. As cultures advanced from hand-wrought iron to machine-forged iron (typically made with trip hammers powered by water), blacksmiths learned how to make steel. Steel is stronger than bronze and holds a sharper edge longer.

Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, and has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day.