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dawgvet

How to tell tungsten from brass beads

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Hello,

I was going through my fly tying materials the other day and found my bead box had some of the labels missing. I can't remember which ones were tungsten and which were brass. I fish a lot of fast pocketwater and the tungsten really helps get flies in the strike zone.

Will tungsten beads stick to a magnet? Any other way to tell brass beads (various finishes) from tungsten beads?

Thanks,

Jed

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If you have a strong enough magnet, Tungsten will be weakly attracted to it. Brass is NOT magnetic at all. So, you can use a very strong neodymium magnet and easily separate them.

You might also be able to tell by color. Brass is a lighter shade than Tungsten, usually.

If you have a fine enough measuring scale, you could weigh them. Tungsten is noticeably heavier than brass.

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Like Mike said it can be done, but not simply by looking at them all the time. I purchased a cheap jewelers scale several years ago and that's how I determine whats what when not sure.

 

However, you may still need some point of reference. If you're comparing, brass is going to be less dense & tungsten will weigh more in the same size beads. If just weighing beads, you still may not know what they are until you can compare with those you know or some chart that provides the information.

 

Of course, you could try to do the math by weighing & measuring & calculating, but frankly it's much easy to compare to some you know since they're so darn small. rolleyes.gif

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LOL There is always the "use it" test. If they don't look much different, use any one of them. If it doesn't sink as fast as you want, it's a brass bead and you can them put the finished fly in the "brass bead head flies" box. Unless you are fishing very deep water, you might not notice either one as "not heavy enough".

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Most of my "brass" tying beads from Wapsi and other sources ARE absolutely attracted to a rare-earth magnet. Whatever alloy they use to make the beads has some iron in it. Same applies to my tungsten beads. I don't have any way to measure the force but they seem to stick about equally to the magnet. I just went to my desk and tried it again to be sure. The only way to know for sure would be to measure them on a sensitive scale, even then who knows. The manufacturers tell us the beads are tungsten and they are heavier, but unless you buy some brass and some tungsten of the same size from the same distributor and weigh a quantity of them on a scale there's really no way to tell. Personally I have not seen it make enough difference to matter.

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Thanks, JS. Even as I was typing about them, I was wondering if brass could have impurities that would make it magnetic. I guess I should've stopped then ... but in my defense, I did Google it before I posted, and online sources confirmed my theory.

 

The great thing about Neodymium magnets is that they are so strong. The downside is ... they are so strong.

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I've had that problem with bead head flies, wasn't sure if it was brass or tungsten.

 

So I took a known tungsten bead fly, dropped it in the plastic tray where I store my flies several times, and decided I could get probably 80% probability by comparing the sound of the it hitting the plastic. Certainly not scientific, but that's how I've done it.

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I don't think most folks have a scale that is accurate enough. For example, using the values you've shared a 2.8mm brass bead would weigh around 0.0233 grams while a tungsten bead of the same size would weigh 0.0537 grams. Not even considering the variance because each bead is probably slightly different in size, you need a scale that accurately measure a difference of 0.03 grams.

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Fletch brings up a good point. Most postal scales are accurate to 0.1 grams. Meaning they won't work for this application.

 

Oops ... then again, there are scales

http://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-0-01g-Digital-Scale/dp/B0012LOQUQ

that do measure in 0.01 increments.

 

I guess it's just a matter of ... is telling the difference worth buying a scale for?

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