Haha there's something reallllly satisfying about annealing, so weird it's like mowing a lawn or something there's just an odd satisfaction to it! Ahh my first-ever anneal:
View attachment 221326
Unsure why but later sessions never left me with something so clean (not even close actually!), unsure what I did differently as I just get a hibachi or my fire-pit going and toss it in, let it get to red-hot glow for a lil bit, then take out and toss on the grass til it's ready to handle (quenching doesn't have relevant effect in this context, at least if you don't have the expensive equipment needed to hyper-cool it which is something a bucket of ice-water definitely does *not* do!)
I'm way over-due for a session so will definitely report back with anything I've forgotten (or learn today, I learn something almost every time as I can count the times I've annealed on one hand, in lots of cases I'm wasteful and just nip-off the old wire / put on fresh (off-the-spool) wire, want to stop doing that if I can re-use for all the good reasons behind re-using stuff
)
There should be zero reason to wait til the next day, when they're glowing red the crystals are re-aligning (and, thus, making it soft again) so from that point it's "done" and just a matter of getting it safe for use IE off the fire and cooled, you can toss them on the grass and grab them shortly thereafter when making sure your fire-pit / whatever is fully out, or you can dunk them in water and handle them immediately (I read that quenching in water helps reduce oxidation, will cool some on the grass today and quench others in water to see if there's a visible oxidation difference)
Re shape, I'd always done hoops that're between 6-12", just because that's what I'd seen, however this time I'll be doing more rods (well, lots of rods-with-1-center-bend, since I'm always wiring 2 branches with any given wire, so seems to make sense to anneal them as ready-to-use "V" shaped (only an even steeper angle than a V) rods so they're ready for use, just put the center of the V on wherever my 2-branches' center is and start wiring!
Making rolls automatically means doing some work-hardening just to un-roll it before wiring, this isn't a problem (for me at least) with 12g and thinner wires but with 10g it's definitely a lot easier to do a good job if you've annealed it and just have it as a straight-length that's ready to go on as-is and just be twisted-up!
[edited-in: BTW is there anything serious to worry about w/ steel-cored wire? Never even heard of it TBH, will check at H.Depot but 99% sure that their 10g (uninsulated) copper is pure,
but if it had a steel core- so what? Is there any problems to be wary of, or you just mean that it'd essentially have the diameter-to-strength ratio of aluminum instead of copper?