copper that went through shop fire

[urnesBeast]

Now, I put my roofing copper through the forge when I am doing fold forming, but the long 'cold' fire of the smithy fire I had a few months back turned the roll of copper brittle.

Is there any cure for this? I tried annealing it, but it was still unusable.

Any use other than scrap buyer for this?

Thanks,
Doug

[acoop101]

From what I've gathered and had good luck with to anneal copper it must be heated then quenched, not sure why not sure if it's true but it's worked for me and hopefully some one else can give there opinion on this.

[781]

How hot did the copper get?

Did you burn it up is why it is bad
Get it too hot and it is junk

Copper gets as soft with a slow cool as a quench.
Whith a quench yo get to work it sooner

[urnesBeast]

When I say it went through the 'smithy fire', I mean the smithy burned to the ground. Not sure how hot or long it was in there. I would say about an hour at campfire heat, then quenched by the firemen.

[Frosty]

If it won't anneal it might have absorbed enough oxygen in the fire to embrittle it.

I don't know for sure but it's the first thing that comes to mind so take it FWIW.

Frosty

[ThomasPowers]

What he said, it's now probably full of copperoxides along the grain boundries and so cannot be annealed or worked (or melted). Needs to be re-smelted. Scrap it!

[pkrankow]

I agree with Frosty. I just read about this stuff and O2 is the problem. Not sure how to fix it. Copper is annealed in either an oxygen free atmosphere or a vacuum during production, pending the final use. Most us us do not have access to a high temperature bell jar to control atmosphere gasses. You only need something like 800F for a few hours (look up for yourself please) so an electric kiln may work being fed from a nitrogen bottle. No promises so try a sample first. May still be scrap.

Phil