Mr. Place, will you be stock removing or forging this 1095?
1095 is a hypereutectoid, which means it has around .15% more carbon than can be handled by pearlite alone. The extra carbon will seperate out into carbide (cementite) sheets that are harder than any quenched steel (martensite) could get alone. Of all the simpler steels I have worked with 1095 has dulled or burned up more of my cutting tools than any other. Normalizing can only exacerbate the problem if not done very carefully.
I have a micrograph somewhere of a huge segregated cementite band running down the center of a piece of 1095 (coincidentally from Admiral, though I make no judgements either way there), however, I will give you folks a break from yet another one of my tired micrographs.
If one has a heavy segregation of cementite like this and heat the steel only to let it air cool or cool in wood ashes, what you will get is a bar of soft workable pearlite with a band of extremely hard cementite running through the middle. This will allow you to drill or saw just fine until you reach that zone and then the drill will squeek and the saw will have its teeth rounded over, appearing as if you somehow hardened the steel in the operation, but the mechanisms for this to occur are not typically possible under such conditions. If these bands are large enough they can increase the brittlness of your final work as the cementite will end up in your grain boundaries when the blade is hardened.
So I guess I should try to offer some ways to get rid of this. The best way I have found to get the stuff soft enough to drill and cut is to spheroidize it and avoid pearlite altogether, since it cannot handle the excess cementite. Spheroidizing will take all of the carbides and ball them up so they can be easily pushed aside.
How to get rid of the segregation to begin with is another factor, that will require plenty of heat and time, since it has to be done with diffusion. Here is one instance that forging can indeed improve the steel, but not in any of the silly ways normally touted by bladesmiths. Low temperature forging will not move this stuff, in order to get that carbon to disperse you will need it hot! Recommended forging temps for 1095 are as high as 2,100 F. and not below 1500 F. for industry, and whether the average smith wants to believe this there are reasons for this (and not just size).
If you start your forging at around 1900 F. to move the large cross sections, the cycling at these temperatures over Acm will allow that carbon to move around, don't worry about grain growth, it is one of the most fixable conditions in the steel and if your hammer blows are sufficient they will keep grains under control. By the time you get your edge, tip and other thin sections formed you should have lowered your temp to 1500 F. or below, finishing at below critical, not for any silly atom squeezing notions, but to smooth things out, reduce scale and to keep those thin sections from over heating. One old smith told me it was called hammer polishing (a much better term than some others that old smiths have cursed us with). But the initial recommended forging temperatures will have allowed you to move that carbon all round in ways that would not have been possible if you stayed too cool.
Next, normalize to even out and refine the grain and level out that carbon even more. Start out at or above 1500 F. to get all the grain an even size (forget about what the size is, just get it even for now) and then follow up with a few more cycles at lower temperatures to make the even structure finer. If you wnat to spheroidize quench it on the final cycle and temper it at 1300 F. to 1325 F.
I'll stick my foot in my month at times but I try to keep my foot out of someone else's month most the time. 