All I can say is that your work is very fascinating. Really something different and unique.

Once the copper is heated to the point that it is red hot, that area is then annealed. So if you only heat up certain areas to the red hot temp than just those will be annealed.

Is your oven gas or electric? What temp?

www Metalrecipes -- heat and beat to the desired shape, repeat as necessary.
warren

what I want to do is take a 2 foot by 3 foot copper sheet 12oz and anneal the whole sheet . I can't find a handy pizza oven , and propane torch isn't hot/quick/consistent enough , would an oxy-acet torch anneal the whole sheet or even an isolated portion ? this is part one of a very important question for me , I appreciate any feedback , as these can be very costly experiments for me , with the price of metals these days.

Colin,

I don't know if this will work for you or not but I use a weed burner to anneal my copper pieces. It uses propane gas at tank pressure and has a very big flame for the surface area. It can be found at harbor freight:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=91037

It will anneal a piece of copper very quickly but I don't work with as big of pieces that you do. Maybe someone else has used this item to anneal big copper pieces.

Hope this provides some help.

thank you I will probably give that a try . When you anneal your copper how dark does it go ? Since copper spreads heat so readily , I wonder if it will be possible , even in a large sheet , to anneal a localized area without patinating the whole rest of the sheet?

Colin, I use a propane torch with tank pressure, like a small weed burner, it is for roofing or something, anyhow if you are trying to get the whole piece red hot at once it will take a little bit of work. What I do when I anneal large pieces is just work a small area at the time to the red hot heat, and just move slowly to keep at red hot.

www Metalrecipes -- heat and beat to the desired shape, repeat as necessary.
warren

Already I'm benefitting from the expertise on this site ! Can't wait to experiment with torch annealing , meanwhile until I can afford more copper , this really helps .

I appreciate the advice Matt , and I looked into Ron Riel's forge , looked into used pizza ovens on ebay , and was able to glean alot from that seperately , however the dimensions I need to prime , if the peice is to be contained inside the oven , involves very expensive ovens( thousands) , which wouldn't fit to well in my tiny apt .
I also lack even the most rudimentary tools and familiarity with metal fabrication / gas works to be tearing apart my oven .To sum up : I'm destitute of funds and I want to keep all the tools of this art form simple and common/affordable , if I can help it .
I will experiment with Localized non-consistantpropane / oxy-acet annealing on my next batch of copper, and see how that works for portraits.
Colin