The day I realized I was quenching way too early

For about two years I'd been quenching blades right off the forge, thinking I was getting a good hardness. Then I watched a guy at a meetup in Columbus drop a file test on a blade I'd made and it skated off like nothing. He asked me if I was normalizing first and I had no clue what he meant. Anybody else have that moment where they found out their whole heat treat process was backwards?

2 comments

2 Comments

karen2751mo ago

Wait, so were you just heat and beat straight to quench with zero thermal cycling at all?

sanchez.robin1mo ago

Karen's got a point. The heat and beat method works fine for some stuff, but skipping the thermal cycling means you're getting the grain size you started with, just harder. Kinda defeats the purpose unless you're just making a knife that looks cool.