O1 and 1095 are about the same with respect to carbon content -- both contain around .95 percent carbon. 1095 is a plain carbon steel with no significant alloying elements. O1 by contrast contains about .50 percent chromium and depending on the manufacturer, may contain molybdenum, vanadium, and tungsten. Performance wise, both do a respectable job if the heat treating is done properly.
The funny look in the steel that you describe sounds like banding. I am assuming that you are forging your blades. Undesirable banding and grain growth can both be fixed by normalizing the steel after forging.
Normalizing is done by taking the steel to slightly above critical then allowing it to cool in still air. There is NO soak time on this. After the forging process a couple of things exist. One is grain growth assuming you are forging above the austenizing temperature. The other is a non-uniform composition throughout the steel. That is, one area may have more carbon than the area adjacent to it. Noramlizing allows the carbon to diffuse evenly thoughout the ferrite matrix, and on the slow cooling reduces the grain structure, rendering a more homogeneous piece of steel that will repond much better to the heat treatment. Most smiths that I know do the normalizing heat three times.
Remember, if the steel is crap going into the hardening phase, it will still be crap after quenching -- just harder crap.
If I'm not being clear on this I recommend that you read Kevin Cashen's excellent article on Sword Forum Magazine. The URL is:
http://swordforum.com/metallurgy/ites.html
If you want to compare the chemical composition of various steels, I suggest that you look at the chart on my site, which has the compositional specs for about 50 different steels. The URL is:
http://www.shreve.net/~primos/steelcmp.htm 
