Jesse, According to my tables SAE40 is Cu85 Pb5 Sn5 Zn5, or precisley what Alan quoted for typical gunmetal. So there you go. To add anguish to injury, as much as I dislike gunmetal, I have a full set of castings for a fine large scale Corliss mill engine every man & boy of which is in red brass. :-( Regards, Harry Sure and you will paint the engine anyway Harry, so the colour makes little difference. One of the reasons I wanted to paint the model Bernays engine I just finished was because of the several shades of brass/bronze I used in its construction. As it happened, the most obnoxiously red piece was a handwheel for reversing and a tall column for the crosshead guide. As it turned out, I discarded the handwheel because I realized the engine would probably not run in reverse and I used "gold" paint to cover the colour of the crosshead guide. Jesse Livingston in rainy Troy Tennessee MODEL ENGINEERING DISCUSSION LIST. To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, send a blank email to, modeleng-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.