Playing with a torch

Throughout the process of forming this piece I will frequently be annealing it. I'm not going to show photos of it every time as that would get very boring and repetitive. I'll go through the process here at the start though.

I need to anneal the metal to make it soft and malleable. As I work with it the copper will become work hardened, strongly resisting any movement as I hammer on it. It also gets more brittle the harder it is, so I would begin to run the risk of cracking it. With copper annealing is a process of heating it up until it's glowing at least a dull red in dimmed lighting conditions. This will recrystallize the metal molecules, forming larger crystals with tiny spaces between them which results in a softer metal. As I hammer and work it I'm breaking up these crystals, making them smaller and packing them down into the tiny spaces within the metal. This is what makes it harder.

In this photo I've got out my large, propane annealing torch, just starting to heat up the sheet.