A friend recently mentioned that he thought it would be cool to have some shotshell buttons on his blazer.
He did me a really good turn recently, and I like to make things, so I thought I'd solder some button findings to some trimmed down hulls and surprise him with them.
This should be quite a straightforward task, but when I looked into it deeper, I discovered that hulls nowadays tend to have brass-plated steel, not real brass.
This presents a few problems; not only is steel difficult to solder, but the plating would wear off if I attempted to give them a good polish.
Are any hulls still real brass, and how would I be able to tell short of taking a magnet to a gun store?
Incidentally, to compound the problem, I need 20ga and .410 to have the correct sizes for the buttons.
He did me a really good turn recently, and I like to make things, so I thought I'd solder some button findings to some trimmed down hulls and surprise him with them.
This should be quite a straightforward task, but when I looked into it deeper, I discovered that hulls nowadays tend to have brass-plated steel, not real brass.
This presents a few problems; not only is steel difficult to solder, but the plating would wear off if I attempted to give them a good polish.
Are any hulls still real brass, and how would I be able to tell short of taking a magnet to a gun store?
Incidentally, to compound the problem, I need 20ga and .410 to have the correct sizes for the buttons.