After some thought I concluded the answer to this question is NO. Why? Because although the tempering process does change the tensile strength of glass it doesn’t affect it’s surface hardness. In other words if annealed glass had fabricating debris on it and it was scraped - BINGO - scratches! That pretty much shoots in the foot all those GANA reps and wanna be buddies that say heat strenghtened glass is inherently different. Fact is it isn’t where it counts most to us - [B]on the surface[/B]!
although it is much harder to remove scratches from. I also found it is distort easier. Perhpas that is because one has to work longer to get the scratch out.
