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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 4863905, member: 27832&quot;]I enjoyed reading what he had to say, but...</p><p><br /></p><p>On his page about annealing, he talks about <i>quenching</i> a coin after heating it. This is the <i>opposite</i> of what I&#039;d expect to do. <i>Annealing</i> metal involves heating it, and then cooling it <i>slowly</i>; this leaves it softer and more malleable.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you <i>quench</i> it, cooling it rapidly, the metal is made <i>harder</i> and <i>less</i> malleable. So it seems like that would undo your work, and possibly leave you worse off than when you started!</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, I haven&#039;t studied ancient coin composition and restoration, and I sure haven&#039;t experimented with them -- but I <i>have</i> studied metallurgy a little bit, and experimented with heating and quenching various metals. Annealing them makes them <i>softer</i>, and heating and then quenching them makes them <i>harder</i>, almost universally. (I&#039;m sure there are perverse alloys that behave differently, but they&#039;re definitely the exception.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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