You don't want to melt the gaskets, just get them red hot. A propane
torch works just fine. And the water quench flakes the oxide off of the
copper, leaving the gaskets nice and clean.

Aaron Coolidge wrote:
Rip wrote:
: No, copper is annealed by quenching rapidly.


OK, you got me there. As it turns out, copper may be annealed by aircooling
or quenching. To harden copper requires a temperature decrease of about
10,000 degC per second which isn't going to happen if you drop 'em in water.

By the way, you'll never get copper hot enough to anneal with a propane torch.
Oxy-propane, yes.