Hello All, new here figured I’d say Hi

[Jmat1775]

Hi I’m Jarret from NW Wisconsin. Started scrapping just for extra cash, load up the truck bring it to the scrap yard type thing. Now I’m getting into deeper the last few years, helps being a home builder 2 lots of scrap all the time. Anyway saw a post about color blindness and scrapping I have the same issue. A lot of the time I can’t tell the difference between copper brass or aluminum. Need a bright day with the right lighting to sort everything I can’t sort by just the way it looks or bends. Any suggestions. I saw another post that somebody put up similar to mine. Will try to find that again also. Thanx Everybody...

[gorven]

Welcome to the forum

[JJinLV]

Hi Jarret. Easiest solution would be find a good bright flashlight and keep it in your scrapping area. There are other ways to tell. No matter the aluminum alloy it will always be significantly lighter in weight than a similar amount of brass or copper. For brass from copper, all brass alloys including red brass are visually lighter than copper under any decent light after grinding a small spot. The brightness difference will be clear for no matter the degree of colorblindness

[eesakiwi]

Using a small file to file thru the outside Oxide layer will get you a window into the real metal.
The filed surface is rough and has a better surface area so you can see the parent metals colour better.

Grinding is slightly better but a file is quicker. File from a edge towards the flat surface or what can happen is the the outer layer of metal ( like, say, Tin or Silver plating on Copper. Nickel plating on Brass ) gets smeared back over the filed surface.

If you can nick the metal with a hacksaw blade or file, then bend it and break it. The colours quite obvious and you get to see the metal crystal grain structure.
A magnets always the first tool to use.
I found that Nickel plated Brass is very very slightly magnetic, almost unnoticable. Due to Nickel be slightly magnetic. The silvery coloured Brass hex standoff bolts holding motherboards into computers is a good example.