Hammering does two things at once: it moves metal and it hardens it. Push too far without relief and the sheet cracks at the rim. The relief is annealing, heating the metal back to softness so work can continue.
Generations of workers did this without instruments. The metal itself announces readiness: a faint glow in dim light, a change in how the surface reflects, and above all the feel of the hammer. When blows start bouncing instead of biting, the metal has hardened past working. When it takes strikes deeply again after heat, annealing did its job.
We keep this post deliberately free of temperatures and colour charts, partly because workshop practice varies by alloy batch and stock thickness, and partly because the honest description is sensory: watch, listen, feel, adjust.
For owners, one practical takeaway. Those soft blue-grey heat shadows that appear on some pieces are records of this process, not stains. They sit deep in the metal's history, they fade into general patina, and they prove the piece was worked by hand, by eye.
Peetal disc glowing faintly over a workshop flame during annealing.