The simpler solution would be to leave the old system, skip this entire redesign thing, and tweak tempering with the old system to where you don't have to throw your item into a locker for months at a time.
Literally just allowing weapons and armor to be used while tempering would have addressed 99% of enchant's problems without requiring this massive redesign.
Then they could have worked on real shit, like fixing the spells that have been useless since the 90s.