  Wire deposition crystal bar. 
This is a lovely short bar of high-purity hafnium metal.  It is grown on a wire (you can see the core on the cut face) from a vapor of a hafnium compound, possible hafnium iodide though I am not sure of this.  Max Whitby buys this kind of material from China which has become the dominant supplier of a lot of the somewhat unusual elements (not to mention a lot of everything else). 
This is one rod from a lot he got for the series of museum periodic table displays we are working on. 
Source: Max Whitby of RGB 
Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB 
Acquired: 1 November, 2003 
Text Updated: 11 August, 2007 
Price: Donated 
Size: 1" 
Purity: 99.9%
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