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I was playing machinist last night and I remembered that some of you heat treat your reel seat parts somewhere during the process. Does it involve heating up the metal to red hot with a torch and then quenching in oil or water (hardening?) or burying it in sand or lime (annealing?). Seems like hardening a reel seat cap would be beneficial, and annealing a ring to make it tougher would also be beneficial, but I'm not exactly sure. What home heat treating processes are recommended and when should they be done (before turning, or when the part is finished)? Also, I use aluminum or brass for my reel seat parts. Would different heat treating be required depending upon the metal? And, I make ferrules from aluminum or bronze, is heat treating required for these metals when using them for ferrules? (Kyle Druey) Heat treating most nonferrous metals is the exact opposite of heat treating steel. With nickel silver, real silver and gold heating then quenching in water is annealing or softening it. The jewelry metals - brass and bronze included (costume jewelry) are hardened mostly by work hardening - drawing wire or tubing, hammering, roller press. They can be hardened by heating and allowing to cool slowly - burying in powdered mica (Vermiculite), but you can only get it to what they call half hard tempered by that method. Heat treating aluminum depends on the alloy and the level of heat treating. You will see heat treating levels for aluminum going from T1 to T9. Most of the time the heat treating level is specified when you buy the aluminum. (Darryl Hayashida)
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