Final Boiling Thread: a call to all engineers

[QuietJoe]

After reading through pages of old posts on boiling strings and exhausting the forums search tool I did not really find the answer I was looking for, so I decided to add to the pile of threads on boiling strings in hopes that someone will know the theory behind this technique.

I am wondering about boiling not to clean the strings (which I imagine alcohol is better suited to anyway, as has been discussed) but to change the properties of the metal, i.e. the crystaline structure. Basically I was looking for a technique to restore strings, like what temperature (is 100 C from boiling enough? or should we bake to a higher temp?), how long, how fast to heat up, how fast to cool down, how cool (room temp vs freezer).

The past posts on boiling strings are full of practical info and subjective ratings, but I looking for the science of it... if anyone can help.

maybe engineering students would be more help then actual engineers.. I probably could have answered this myself when going through my material science course... but it is all gone now

[nashvillebill]

At boiling water temperatures, the strings won't be affected.

You certainly don't want to anneal the strings, which would happen around 1100 degrees C for stainless IIRC. You don't want to try to raise it even higher then quench the string to heat treat it, that's seriously difficult to get right.

Bottom line, nothing we can do will rework the strings.