I was looking for something thin, reasonably durable and attractive to cover some ugliness where I am filling in holes in a trumpet case left by removing the original hardware and replacing it with something completely different.
I remembered one of my neighbors had given me all these coon hunting award plaques that hadn't been awarded to anyone. Useless MDF with useless thin pieces of anodized aluminum held on with some pretty screws that might be worth removing some day.
I threw them in ye olde junque binne because I knew I could find a use for something some day. I always find a use for everything eventually. That's why I have so much of ye olde junque everywhere, and my place looks like a flea market.
Ah hah. Thin, reasonably durable, and kind of attractive. This will work. Then I got to looking at the engraved plaque thingies. Painted on top, brass inside. Real brass? I pried one off. Yellow all around. Real brass!
I wanted to cut them precisely, and I decided the best way to do that was to hold them against a piece of sacrificial lumber and run them through my table saw. A little 1/32" thick brass won't hurt a carbide blade. Worst case, if they're anodized aluminum, a little 1/32" aluminum won't hurt a carbide blade either.
On the last one, I finally noticed the sparks. Urk. The engraved ones are STEEL, with a tiny plating of brass on both sides.
Urk. :(
It probably still didn't do any serious harm, since the material was so thin, but I REALLY wish I hadn't done that. The blade was so new it still had that "new blade" smell.
Shouldda used a magnet. :(