weckl-x
New member
All bronze has to be cast. Even sheets have to be cast first, before rolling them out into sheets.
The difference is whether you cast a huge ingot which is rolled into a sheet, or cast an individual ingot which = one cymbal.
Before anyone says that SHEET = poor sounding low-budget cymbals, I'd like to remind us all that all Paistes, except the Twenty series, are made from sheets
Btw, B20 refers to 80% copper, 20% tin, and TRACE amounts of silver, not 20%. Otherwise your cymbals would be very expensive :lol:
Anyway, here's some excerpts from Hugo Pinksterboer's book - The Cymbal Book. Any cymbal enthusiast should read it. http://www.amazon.com/Cymbal-Book-Hugo-Pinksterboer/dp/0793519209
On sheet castings
On individual castings (which most of us have seen from the agop/bos factory videos)
The difference is whether you cast a huge ingot which is rolled into a sheet, or cast an individual ingot which = one cymbal.
Before anyone says that SHEET = poor sounding low-budget cymbals, I'd like to remind us all that all Paistes, except the Twenty series, are made from sheets

Btw, B20 refers to 80% copper, 20% tin, and TRACE amounts of silver, not 20%. Otherwise your cymbals would be very expensive :lol:
Anyway, here's some excerpts from Hugo Pinksterboer's book - The Cymbal Book. Any cymbal enthusiast should read it. http://www.amazon.com/Cymbal-Book-Hugo-Pinksterboer/dp/0793519209
On sheet castings
p125.
One of the cymbal manufacturers in this category ["Swiss/German style"] has his B8 bronze cast in huge square bars with a length of 35 feet/10.5 m. These bars are rolled into flat sheets of about 20 times that size.
The rolling of B8 is performed only in one direction. Toomas Paiste: 'Rolling in different direction has no effect on the quality of the [B8] material. B8 can also be rolled in larger quantities,and it needs less intermediate heating then B20, because it's less brittle'. The Paiste sound alloy is, just like B20, rolled in different directions.
On individual castings (which most of us have seen from the agop/bos factory videos)
Some excerpts (p.116):
The individual castings are heated up again to almost melting stage, around 1500F/800C.
The rolling is done seven to fifteen times (for thin cymbals). Every time the metal has to be reheated.
With each pass the casting is rolled in a different direction.
Pinksterboer:"This results in even thickness and an optimal molecular structure."
On the other hand: "Heating and rolling are two sources for future differences in sound between 'identical' cymbals."