The Complete Handbook of Brass Fasteners

Chapter 1: Understanding Brass Fasteners

Walk into any hardware store and you will see bins of cheap zinc screws, boxes of steel bolts, and, tucked away perhaps in a specialty drawer or behind the counter, a smaller selection of brass fasteners. They cost more. They are not the strongest option available. Yet brass fasteners persist because they solve problems that steel and aluminum cannot. Understanding what those problems are, and how brass solves them, is the foundation of this book.

At its most basic, a brass fastener is a mechanical component used to join or secure two or more parts. The parts can be made of any material. The fastener is called "brass" because the alloy it is made from is a copper-zinc mixture. That single fact - the specific metallurgy - changes everything about how the fastener behaves compared to a steel screw or a stainless steel bolt.

The core engineering advantage of brass is not ultimate tensile strength but rather a package of properties: inherent corrosion resistance, excellent electrical conductivity, a low friction coefficient, and a pleasing aesthetic that also signals a certain level of quality in many applications. A brass fastener is chosen not for its ability to hold a skyscraper together, but for its ability to do the right job in the right environment, reliably, for decades. This is the first practical rule for working with brass fasteners: Do not ask a brass fastener to do a steel fastener's job.

What Brass Actually Is

Brass is