Tempering 101

I'm a silversmith. By hobby, not trade.

By trade, I'm a conflict management specialist - coaching, training, facilitating reconciliation, mediating and just coming alongside people in conflict and out of conflict are what I like to do.

And not just conflict as people think of it - disputes, fights and discord - but also the inner conflict that arises up within one's being from  adversity and trauma and other things that catch us off guard and unawares.

So, what does silversmithing have to do with conflict - or adversity and other things that press in on us, for that matter?

A lot actually - if you follow the metaphor.

See the picture here?

Those are rings that I made out of the raw plate silver that you see underneath them.

Raw plate silver isn't very pretty. Nor does it have much of a purpose.  As plate, it just sort of sits there.

But when I take a saw to it and cut it down or into patterns, then a hammer or a mallet to shape it into place, something happens to it...it begins to temper.  Now notice I didn't say it gets a temper or displays a temper.  No, it becomes tempered.

Sometimes the tempering is such that it becomes a little too  hard, so then I need to use my blow torch and aneel it. Aneeling is the process of heating something up so that it becomes fluid and pliable again. Heat it up too much and it melts into a bead but heat it up just right and you get the shape you want. Add some solder, and pieces fuse and join together.

So, one might say tempering is a process to impart increased strength.  But it's also a process that qualifies, lessens or dilutes the original raw material when an additional ingredient either gets mixed in or influences it - like, if one tempers incorrectly, or using a dirty tool, the strengthening will not occur, but rather, the material will weaken.

Temper properly and increased strength occurs.  But become over tempered - temperamental - and weakness sets in.

Tempering can be done by hammering, stretching and pulling the metal, and it can be done by heating it up.

Tempering using heat is a treatment that achieves greater strength by decreasing the hardness of the alloy.  Reduced hardness results in increased ductibility so that brittleness of the metal is decreased.

Makes me go hmmmmm.  Conflict, adversity, things that upset us...that pulls, stretches, hammers us - or heats us up...is intended to decrease our hardness by making us more ductible and less brittle? How does that make sense?

Ductibility is what happens when something is deformed and then reformed under stress.

Hence the metaphor - silversmithing is taking a piece of hard flat raw silver plate  and putting it under enormous stress and heat to render something quite beautiful.  The beautiful thing that results is strong but not hard. And yes, there is a difference; brittleness (aka bitterness) derives from hardness.

The next time you're being tempered in a conflict, or some adversity, think about being ductible, accept the tempering, and allow strengthening, and ultimately, transformation, to occur.