GrayTech thanks for the suggestion of placing the aluminum strips into my melted lead at a future casting session. I have seen threads here that anneal the finished gas checks by putting them into a steel pipe nipple with caps on each end. If I understand the technique it should also work with aluminum strips. Probably not too efficient since limited to the amount of aluminum strips in the pipe. I feel pretty dumb even asking this question, but I wonder if the temperature were kept below the melting point of aluminum if it would work to put the aluminum roll directly into the melted lead? Has anyone tried this ? Thanks again for the thought.