How malleable is bronze?

Question

Obviously it is good for sculptors molding it, but what if I want to hammer it?

Is it soft enough (like lead is) for pounding it into shape with a hammer without breaking my hands?

Answer 1

Hey Scavoc,

"bronze is rather malleable or re-formable by smooching and flattening," site 1

"malleable bronze is an alloy of tin and copper containing no more than 8% tin. It is a single-phase alloy and can be cold rolled into sheets, unlike bell bronze. It is readily available as commercial sheet metal in many grades and thicknesses. Being less sensitive than bell bronze, malleable bronze cymbals are easier for a beginner to play." site #2

Answer 2

It depends obviously on it's thickness. But if you buy it as sheet metal you can work it basically like copper. It is a bit stiffer than copper but not much. It is definitely less malleable than lead.
What you have to do to make it more malleable is to anneal it. To anneal metals like brass, copper or bronze you heat your piece of metal to a dull cherry red with a torch. It helps to do this in a darkened room, basically if you see the metal glow red in the dark it's fine. Then you either let it air cool or quench it in water to cool it off. Obviously you need tongs for this or you get bad burns...
Annealing metal makes it much softer and workable. It will get harder during the process of you working on it, that is - not surprisingly - called work hardening. Once you think it gets too stiff you repeat the annealing process and so on.

But with each reheating the metal will form a dark oxide layer on it's surface. If you hammer on the metal with the oxide layer on you will hammer the oxides into the metal, which will most likely make it impossible to bring eventually to a mirror finish if that's what you want. You should look up how to pickle metal, that will remove the oxide layers without dissolving all the metal.

Read up on silver or metalsmithing techniques. There are a bunch of books about the subject. "Silversmithing" by Rupert Finegold and William Seitz is a good one. You definitely should read something like that BEFORE you start working. It will save you from a lot of mistakes. Or take a class.