Oops, In my impulsive desire to learn the answer to this obviously much contested conundrum, I forgot to include the words "copper head gasket." Fortunately the astute members of this forum intuited my meaning. Then it got off on a freedom of speech tangent. What fun. I much prefer the tongue-in-cheek fecal-annealing process to the anal-retentive (we're getting scatological here) ooh-you-said-a-dirty-word language-police stance. I'm actually installing a .080" thick gasket to lower my compression, which is pretty high in this bike I purchased of unknown provenance. My 72-year-old leg can't take the punishment anymore. And, really going out on a limb here (or not) I am NOT going to anneal it.