Among dedicated woodworkers cryogenically treated plane blades are popular,
and are said to have superior properties to conventionally hardened and
tempered ones.  This is a post-tempering treatment.

A couple of URLs:
http://www.holtey.co.uk/blades.htm

http://www.hocktools.com/productsA2.htm

Archive searches of rec.woodworking and
http://www.wwforum.com/cgi-bin/forum_main/handtool.cgi will yield many
references, a web search on 'cryogenic treatment' will yield dozens of sites
ready to (anti-)cook (?) just about anything, I have not yet seen
harpsihords mentioned, but give it time :-).

Would cryo-treatment of a S*bath*l improve it?  Say parking it on Pluto for
a century or two?

Frank House.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon-o Addleman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 2:09 AM
Subject: Re: newly strung string


> On Fri, Apr 13, 2001 at 06:31:33PM -0400, David Jensen spake thusly:
> > I'm not inclined to enter this discussion, but what the hell...
> >
> > My brother-in-law asked me if I had ever used cryogenically treated
wire. I
> > hadn't, didn't know what it was. Apparently metal parts for critical use
> > applications in military and space hardware are often treated to a very
deep
> > freeze, a slow decrease in temperature down to that approaching liquid
> > nitrogen. The material is held at that cold temp for a while and then
slowly
> > brought back up to ambient temp. The purpose, says my brother-in-law, is
to
> > even out stresses at a molecular level, and, in effect, strengthen the
part. My
> > brother-in-law was curious as to whether or not this might have an
application
> > in harpsichord wire.
> >
> > Does anybody know anything about this?
>
> There's a continuous string of debate on the saxophone mailing lists
> about this as well. Several professionals have gotten whole saxes
> treated like this - some stores even offer the treatment as an
> option on all purchases. No one has really settled if it actually
> does anything or not, and it's pretty costly - probably much more so
> with saxes than with wire, since you need to completely disassemble
> the instrument and remove all non-metal parts, then completely
> rebuild and repad it. Proponents say it makes the instrument louder
> and more responsive... who knows?
>
> --
> Jon-o Addleman