Brass Rail Repairs

[Ron Nossaman]

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