Solution to Difficult Wire

[Fishpart]

I made what I consider an amazing discovery that I thought some of you might be able to use.

I have been using .0625" dia 316L SS rods for my through wires and was finding them tough to work with. I also tried some .041" dia 316L mig wire and found it difficult to work with. 316L is supposed to be annealed, but I thought the mig wire wis a little too lively. I tried heating the mig wire with a propane torch till it was bright orange (around 1100-1220 F) and let it slowly air cool. After cooling I found the material was extremely easy to work with, but the .041" dia was a little too soft to stand up in the plug. I tried the same thing with the .0625" dia rods and found that the material behaved beautifully. I folded the wire over a small rod and squeezed it with pliers and came out with a beautiful ring with theh two ends of the wire laying almost perfectly parallel. Even though the tensile strength of the material drops when you anneal, at 80,000 psi for annealed 316 SS your 1/16"through-wire still has a breaking strength around 250 pounds.

I measured where the wire stuck through the plug and also annealed that section of wire and found it much easier to do my tail wrap.