Oh I am all too happy to share! Thank you for the opportunity to absolutely geek out here.

There’s a process in heat treating called case hardening. It’s where you take a metal to a temperature that changes its atomic structure and increases its porosity, its ability to absorb; it moves from a phase called body centered cubic to one called face centered cubic. This is an atomic level structural change, it’s the most bare-bones aspect of life, the way a few atoms sit together in a lattice. These are the most basic stresses of life; push, pull, tension, torque.

You take the metal up to this high heat, and at the same time you pummel it with carbon-enriched atmosphere. It’s sort of like a person wearing an oxygen mask, they’re feeling amazing because they’re filled with fresh, pure oxygen—oxygen, something we’re very, very dependent on and we function so much more efficiently when we have lots of it. In the same sort of way that we’re dependent on oxygen as biological beings, metals are dependent on other elements as well, and carbon is a very popular choice for many metals.

So you take this metal that’s as physically open as it can be, and you absolutely smother it with carbon for a while. Eventually the carbon-enriched atmosphere begins to seep into the very essence of the metal, a few atoms at a time. The carbon moves from outside, from the air, and it slips into the pores of the open metal and it slowly begins to dissolve into the atomic structure. The carbon-enriched metal develops two distinct layers, a case and a core. If you were to take a section of a case-hardened part and look at it under a microscope, you’d see a very clear differentiation of core and case. You let it sit there at this porous, high temperature for a while. You eventually lower the carbon content you’re pumping into the atmosphere as well as lower the temperature a bit; you just need enough in the atmosphere to keep it at equilibrium, so the carbon that’s soaked in doesn’t squeeze back out, but you’re not trying to make it absorb anything else. It just takes time for the new carbon to soak in. Bigger pieces of metal will need to sit longer than smaller pieces, you have to make sure to give it time for it to work. There’s no rushing nature.

So now you’ve got a hot piece of metal that’s taken in a lot of good stuff. What happens next? It’s a TRAUMATIZING EVENT to the steel’s system. We’re going to take this thing, this enlightened piece of steel, and we’re going to quench it in oil or brine. That’s taking this phase that doesn’t exist at room temperature and freezing it in time—capturing as much of that highest sense of self, at its highest level of absorption, causes a lot of mechanical stresses. These stresses will quickly turn into fractures and hairline cracks that will completely crumble under any amount of stress; a metal will simply POP and crack, just under the weight of its own existence. But we can reduce the internal stresses through a processes called tempering.

Tempering is like a massage for a metal. It’s been through a lot at this point; it’s been taken to temperatures around 1800°F and held there and subjected to a lot of excess carbon. Our metal could use a good lattice massage. There’s no better way to warm your bones than by getting into an oven, a minimum of 300°F but depending on the metal and the required final mechanical property requirements, temperatures as high as 1100°F just to anneal some stresses. All of that heat, just to keep this incredibly strong, incredibly vulnerable material from imploding in on its own forces. But once you give it that heat, once you let it soak in all of that goodness that comes from heat massaging an atomic lattice, you have some very, very strong metal.

And sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes you don’t quite hit the right mechanical properties, so you have to go in at a higher temperature. You have to give it some extra care and attention and yeah, it cuts into production time and that means it costs money too, but it’s worth it to get it right. It’s important; a material left too hard can break in service because hard metal is brittle metal. You need your metal to be as equilibrium on the stress plane as you can get it. And you do have to give it some tough love sometimes; a material that’s too soft can break in service too, it might as well be chewing gum on the bottom of your shoe if it’s too soft. It’s worth taking the time to let it get just right; to let its internal stresses become bearable, to soften, so that it can be stronger than it ever was before, but don’t leave it so soft that it’s prone to being mistaken for having approximately the same strength as a stick of Juicy Fruit.

I think that if we can excite our own molecules—if we can find that feeling that allows us to be open, that allows us to absorb all of that extra good stuff from the atmosphere that we’re told about—self love and radical self-acceptance and all of those far-fetched concepts—then maybe we can find a way to quench and temper ourselves. Maybe there’s a way we can sit with ourselves and absorb all of that, let it diffuse into our selves the way that carbon steel absorbs carbon; let the humanity diffuse back into ourselves as we learn to become human again.

And maybe there are ways we can capture those best parts of our selves and find ways to remember those things. Maybe we can start to shift our own atomic structures in such a way that we can accept these things we are so afraid of—love, from ourself and others. Compassion. Empathy. Understanding. Tolerance. Maybe we can let those things seep in, the same way that everything else seeped in before. We all have different stories, but we all ended up here the same way; we lived terrible experiences, we absorbed so many terrible things. We internalize, we externalize, we compartmentalize and decompartmentalize. We become these ever-fractured beings held together and torn apart by our own internal stresses, and we are greatly affected by the external stresses as well. There are stresses from every direction. So many stresses. They're literally coming from every direction, it's madness.

We are in desperate need of a stress relief. That’s usually 1100°F – 1250°F for a minimum of two hours.

That is so much raw energy, just to relieve some stress in a metallic structure. Metal is pretty tough stuff though, and I think it makes sense to learn from the best teachers you can. Metal has no consciousness, it doesn't care how much time or effort or money you have invested in it; it either works or it doesn't, it is dictated by nature alone.

Anyway, hopefully something in there made sense haha. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to ramble about the idea.