Turning metal

[mickdundee]

I remember reading on here that people have turned softer metals like brass and aluminium. Ive been offered some small quantities of ofcuts at work of brass which I'm happy to have a try at and also some phosphor bronze. I suspect the answer is yes but is this too hard to turn on a wood lathe. It's a lovely colour polished up

[Redtails3]

It depends on the brass , the prosper bronze if it's yellow i5s cast you will turn it if  it's a dark purple colour its rolled and it's hard.
With the brass that group of materials is wide from soft with lead/aluminium to admiralty brass with its naval connection is very tough and hard to the point of dulling carbide tooling.
With brass a rule of thumb if it's yellow its machinable the darker its trouble.

[mickdundee]

The bronze is rolled bar and a dark copper sort of colour so I guess that's no good to me. The brass does seem soft it drills and files very easily. Thank you

[fuzzyturns]

Compared to steel, all sorts of bronze and brass are soft. I have worked with all of them on my wood lathe. However, you do want to turn the speed down, use very sharp tools (ideally with carbide bits), very small cuts, very short overhang. Patience is the name of the game.

[Paul Hannaby]

I turned some steel on my lathe last week, it didn't take long with a HSS spindle gouge.

[mickdundee]

I didn't expect steel to be workable on a wood lathe   

[fuzzyturns]

Mild steel is of similar hardness to harder types of bronze, so should work OK. There are so many types of steel out there, you really need to know the precise type before giving it a go. Any type of stainless steel or tool steel will be hard work.