Stronger is not a specific enough term with metal, but tempering is the opposite of what you described, which is hardening.
Steel becomes harder and more brittle if quenched (hardening), and softer and less brittle if cooled slowly (tempering).
Cold Rolling steel is done to avoid the heat cycle which would otherwise result in tempering, which is why its specific stats don't strike me as particularly relevant past the first launch.
Heat cycles also have the effect of warping steel.
Uh what? This is exactly the inverse of what happens. Quenching leads to stronger, more flexible steel. Slow cooling leads to harder, but more brittle steel. The reason is grain structure - slow cooling allows larger grains, which don't allow the movement of dislocations as freely, but the loss of flexibility costs in ultimate tensile strength.
Please cite your correction or delete it if you find you are in error. I have provided my 2 sources which are in addition to my peer and personal experience in blacksmithing.
I don't know about his general claim, but a detail within his comment is right.
Smaller grain size leading to stronger material -- this is a result of more grain boundaries as the scale of the grain goes down. Hall-Petch strengthening.[0] A secondary effect is that with smaller grains oriented in random directions the metal is more resistant in general from stresses in all directions; whereas with larger grains you tend to get weakness in a particular direction (along the slip planes.)
This is common knowledge, at least it's basic material physics that I learned in college.
Actually I said strong is too ambiguous of a term to use. For instance, do you want it "strong" enough to not bend under x force at y temperature, or do you want it "strong" enough to bend rather than shear at z force?
It is more practical to discuss the hardness and ductility at specific temperatures, as well as its ability to keep its carbon content under those temperature conditions.
But I think the word GP was looking for was annealing. Annealed metal bends quite easily (that's the analogy in 'simulated annealing' in optimization theory). For instance the wire bonsai practitioners use is traditionally made of annealed copper. Copper is already pretty ductile but once annealed it's positively floppy. Bending it work-hardens it, causing it to stiffen back up. Eventually one learns that if you bend it just so, it will stay where you wanted it to stay.
You do not want your space craft reconfiguring itself.
Tempering is the correct terminology. Annealing is a slow and controlled heating, gradually reducing the heat over time.
from Wikipedia:
"Tempering [...] is done by heating the metal to some temperature below the critical point for a certain period of time, then allowing it to cool in still air."
Steel becomes harder and more brittle if quenched (hardening), and softer and less brittle if cooled slowly (tempering).
Cold Rolling steel is done to avoid the heat cycle which would otherwise result in tempering, which is why its specific stats don't strike me as particularly relevant past the first launch.
Heat cycles also have the effect of warping steel.