To verify what I thought I remembered from too many years ago, I just tried an experimennt. Using both a piece of hard brass rod of undetermined alloy, and an old brass flange rail I dug out of the back of the bottom drawer in the "miscellaneous" section of the shop, this is what I did. heated one end of both the rod, and the rail to reasonably bright cherry, and quenched them in water. Then I heated the other ends of both to a similar color and let them air cool. a half hour later, the two ends of either piece were indistinguishable. They were both nicely annealed, whereas the middle of both pieces was still very hard. Conclusion, and verification of intermittantly faulty memory: Brass doesn't harden with heat and quench, like steel, and the cooling rate isn't a factor. The annealing is in the heating, the cooling rate doesn't matter. Ron
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