@bdwarner or anyone,
I'm looking around the net and found
this. They list their sold copper wire as soft drawn. I've found elsewhere copper sold as hard, medium hard and soft drawn. What do these terms mean?
I believe 'soft drawn' refers to the hardness of the wire as you will recieve it. When making wire they start with a larger diameter then they need and it usually gets drawn (pulled) through a series of circular dies to reduce its diameter (quite forcefully). This process makes the resulting material very hard. I'm not familiar with the workability of 'soft drawn' as opposed to any other wire- it may be just another selling point. Perhaps you could order a few samples to test before you order in bulk.
I know as a rule of thumb, I work with a lot of sheet metal, wether it be brass, copper, bronze, or silver- it all comes about HALF hard as a result from the process of industrial rolling to achieve the desired guage or thickness, the resulting hardness aids in shipping, shearing, packaging etc to reduce the risk for deformation before it reaches the buyer. Think of it as a paperclip, a paperclip only has so many 'bends' in it so to speak, if bent back and forth repeatedly it will inevitably crack in half- just like copper wire will, this is why we anneal to return the metal to a 'dead soft state' so that the wire can be bent many times before it is work hardened again in which case it can be reannealed and reformed.
I wouldn't over think annealing. Try it out, its easy. You could use your stove, a bbq, or hell just throw it in a bonfire and pull it out when it has a good glow on it.. experiment a little before you shell out big bucks on 'specialty' wire. Hope this helps.