A Ph.D was in my shop talking to me about copper. Insisted Turtle Island injuns made everything with just cold hammering.
I said they had to anneal it. Metal doesn't work that way. You cannot keep forging without annealing.
"No, it was only cold hammering."
Faced with someone who does metalwork for a living, Ph.D man plowed ahead with a theory needing magic hammers because he missed the part where annealing is repeated between cold forging.
@istvan nah, not 'education' but arrogance. buddy thinks he's so smart cuz he's edumacated but an actual intellectual person would rather listen to you, educated or not.
quality of person i'd say. nonetheless, i like this factoid and the tools. neat stuff :)
Apparently his hangup was he didn't know if pre-Columbian metworlworking had the mastery of heat to anneal metal.
I tried to explain copper anneals at 400 C and liquefies at 1083 C.
Primitive cultures bisque fired pottery at 538 C (modern bisque is 980 C) in a pit. If you can fire your pottery at 538 C and copper melts at 1083 C, you can toss it in the pit and have it come out annealed.