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Today I had a material salesman tell our purchasing personnel that he had some Stainless Steel T301 that was annealed and then ?tempered? to Full Hard. When the proposal was given to me for review, I rejected it because you can?t ?temper? T-301 to Full Hard. The salesman corrected me and said they tempered it by roll hardening the material. I realize that you can increase the hardness and tensile strength of 300 series Stainless, but this is not ?tempering?. I was always taught that tempering is a method of using heating and cooling practices to anneal a hardened material down to a desired hardness. You heat treat a piece of 1095 annealed spring steel and then temper it by drawing it at an elevated temperature. The salesman disagreed. His idea is that tempering is any process that changes the strength of the material. Thoughts please?