What can we do with Hafnium? 
The first haf of the story

During one of my last days at Creative Metalworks, a friend offered me the chance to play around with some Hafnium, a rare earth metal. This friend’s work as a nuclear engineer had lead him to become fascinated with the unusual element and its neutron-absorbing properties. Having obtained a good chunk of the stuff, he came to me to see if we could turn it into a ring. Though I was too short on time to take on the full project, I did get the wonderful opportunity to perform my favorite scientific experiment on a small sample of hafnium: Set it on fire. 

Herein lies the gripping tale of that one time I tried to melt hafnium.
(Spoilers: It didn’t melt, but I had fun anyway)