How well does bronze hardware survive a fire?

[Porter Wayfare]

I need a beefier gooseneck for my Wayfarer and I found someone with one that is bronze and it is thicker where my stainless one is bending. But it is salvaged from a wood boat that was lost in a fire. What do you think that might have done to its strength? I have a picture of it that I will post if I can figure out how.

Thanks all,
Porter

[gpdno]

Copper alloys are typically not heat treated.  For steel, the heat of a fire might be enough to change the steel back to an annealed state - reducing strength.  As I said, with copper, heat treating is not done so as long as the part show on obvious signed of damage - such as warpage, melting, etc, I would expect it to be fine.

Greg

[JWalker]

I agree, bronze I do not believe is a hardenable alloy, therefore as long as it didn't get hot enough to melt it (which would be obvious) I don't think there would be any structural change to the alloy. If it *did* get hot enough to melt it then it wouldn't be the shape you want and therefore wouldn't be suitable....but I don't think there would be any loss of strength.

Steel or stainless OTOH may pass into the zone of excitability (google martensite) with a hot enough fire (albeit that would take a pretty massive fire, and a reasonable amount of time in said fire), and then dependent on how fast or slow they cooled either harden or anneal and probly not the one you would want....

for instance if the fire was hot enough, and then the boat suddenly sank, a piece of steel would cool VERY quickly when the steel hit the water, and most likley harden....REALLY harden.....and thus be brittle....(without a tempering to soften the hardening)
I have no knowledge of 304 316 or 416 stainless and hardening, so I don't know if they will air harden like most stainless or not....but I would think with a cold splash they would harden and become brittle also.

If they get real hot and then cool slowly it may anneal and be soft....(in terms of metal being soft) but may warp in cooling...but if it re annealed itself I wouldn't see any problem using it, the problem would be did it anneal? And with many stainless they will air harden, and thats a whole other ball of melted wax. Again I dunno about the stainless used on boats specifically.

but since we are talking a fire on a wood boat, I doubt that the heat generated would be enough,
and since we are talking about bronze....and not steel or stainless......

ignore 90% of my post!  ;D

(Typical fine print IANAL YYMV and UAYOR)

[Porter Wayfare]

Thanks very much you guys!