String Breakage (Reply)

[Ron Nossaman]

At 05:29 PM 1/20/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi Ron,
>Does your book have the data on brass.
>I lost my notes from the class I attended in Dearborn.
>There was a class on annealing the brass rails. He passed around a sample of
>annealed and not annealed. The annealed one was noticeably more flexible.
>I have since wondered, if putting it in an oven on the self-clean cycle, would
>accomlish the same thing.
>Regards,
>John M. Ross
>Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada
>

Hi John,
Didn't find anything specific to annealing brass. Recommended temp for hot
working yellow brass is 1300-1400 F range, for whatever that's worth. From
my own experience, if you heat brass to a dull cherry and water quench, it
anneals pretty well. I have no idea what the temp is at that stage, but it's
just short of the temperature at which it slumps (suddenly!) so be quick and
pay attention. It doesn't seem to harm the brass, other than making it ugly,
but it may degrade it in ways I'm not aware of. In any case, it's not too tough.

I doubt the oven self clean cycle would get hot enough. Get a small piece of
brass bar stock at a salvage yard or hardware store and try it. You may be
teaching the Ross method of kitchen brass annealing and fruit cake tempering
(you can't eat them, maybe they would make good tooling stock) at the next
convention.

 Ron