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Basically, the capability to harden, temper, and anneal steel allows you to do a lot that you couldn't otherwise. It means you can take a single material and rotate it through any of soft and malleable, knife-hard and brittle, and strong and springy.

For example, without a heat treatment oven, it would be very hard to make a new hard cutting tool. What would you cut it with? You basically have only the option of grinding it, which is very difficult especially because if you overheat it at any time you'll destroy the temper.

But if you soften it, you can use other steel tools to sculpt it to any shape you like, and then you can harden it again!

Now you can make bearings, hinges, chisels, files, sawblades, knives, wear surfaces, deadbolts, springs, needles, gears, and all sorts of other things that require a hard material in order to perform or last a long time.




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