Yeah the tradition of hand finishing is why some old-school guys still swear by it.

Doesn't @corawest's slow creep idea mean we're all one extra toolbox away from disaster?

Huh, that's actually really interesting. When you say the projects are more meaningful now, what does that look like? Like, are you mostly fixing super old or special books that wouldn't work digitally anyway, or is it a different kind of repair work?

Oh man, this reminds me of something similar that happened to my friend Leo. He got into a big argument online saying AI art tools were just like cameras, a new tool for artists. Then someone asked him how he'd feel if a camera could only take pictures by scanning and mixing up millions of photos taken by other people without their okay. He called me right after and was just totally quiet for a second, like his whole argument just fell apart. It's a different way to see it for sure.

Yeah, metal really doesn't care about size. I work with copper a lot (for small jewelry bits) and I finally started annealing after every few rounds of hammering, even on tiny jump rings. It feels like a pause, but it totally stopped those little stress cracks from showing up.