billa's monochromatic interference-based surface viewer might be useful in determining levels of deformation.
my initial impression is fairly skeptical - i rather doubt this sort of result would be regularly reproducible. if not, however... there was another thread here discussing annealing, and i believe annealed copper is both softer and slightly more conductive than hard worked - which could provide even more of an improvement in a well-designed block.
you might want to research the effect of annealing on hard worked silver, though good information is difficult to find. the other thread was focusing mainly on copper, and a 10% improvement in conductivity was speculated....
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