The 260 brass wire has a soft temper, an unpolished (mill) finish, and a standard tolerance, and meets American Society for Testing and Materials International ASTM B134 specifications. The 260 brass alloy, also known as yellow brass and cartridge brass, is corrosion resistant and has high formability. The material is nonmagnetic and can be cold worked for increased strength and rigidity. The soft temper, also known as annealed, bends readily with minimal force and holds the shape.

Copper, brass, and bronze are known as red metals because they contain copper, which has a reddish color. Copper, a term that applies to alloys containing at least 99.3% copper, offers very high thermal and electrical conductivity and provides corrosion resistance and formability. Brass is an alloy of copper and varying levels of zinc, sometimes with additional elements. It provides greater strength than copper or bronze. Bronze is commonly an alloy of copper and tin, but sometimes it is copper alloyed with other elements such as aluminum, phosphorus, manganese, or silicon. Tin gives bronze more corrosion resistance than brass and greater strength than copper.

Tensile strength, used to indicate the material’s overall strength, is the peak stress it can withstand before it breaks. Corrosion resistance describes the material's ability to prevent deterioration caused by atmosphere, moisture, or other medium. Hardness (commonly measured as indentation hardness) describes its resistance to permanent surface deformation. Formability indicates how easily the material can be permanently shaped.