Annealed vs. Heat treated

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Skidoosh

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Can someone help me with understanding the difference between these two terms?
 
Annealing, according to a cursory search, is meant to soften the metal and make it more workable. Heat treating (tempering?) is meant to toughen it.
 
Annealing is fully drawing the hardness from a workpiece such that it is as soft as it can be when at room temperature. Heat treating is the method of using temperature-based methods to affect the properties of the material in question. Annealing is one kind of heat treatment, used to make a workpiece easier to grind, machine, etc. or to max out its toughness/ductility. In a knife industry context it usually means the full set of temperature-based processes used in producing the desired performance qualities in the tool, including normalizing, quenching, tempering, cryo, and such.
 
Skidoosh said:
Can someone help me with understanding the difference between these two terms?
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When steel is annealed is soft so you can use file on it and make something like knife .Then you need to heat that -knife- to about 1500 F then quench in some medium like oil or water and steel will be hard as glass .Since glass will break easy you need to temper that knife on around 400F for some time and steel will lose some hardness after that but will be tough ........then put some wood for handle , sharpen edge and you have knife :thumbsup:
 
Skidoosh said:
Can someone help me with understanding the difference between these two terms?
Click to expand...

everyone made good points, but a more simple way to think of it -

annealed is soft - easily workable with a file or sandpaper
heat treated is hard - the final result after large temperature changes which lock in hardness (and structural changes) - a file will just skate off
 
dirc said:
heat treated is hard - the final result after large temperature changes which lock in hardness (and structural changes) - a file will just skate off
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Not really though. Heat treated just means treated with heat. That may or may not mean that it's hard. The term "heat treated" is just typically used as shorthand for "we ran it through all the temperature-based steps necessary to produce the desired effect on the material", whatever that may entail. What those specific steps are and the particular final results will vary greatly depending on context. What you're describing seems to be the results of quenching, which is just one of those steps.
 
Yes “heat treatment” can refer to any step but knifemakers often use the phrase to refer to the final steps of heating to the hardening temperature, quenching, and tempering. This step is also called a “quench and temper.” If a knife or piece of steel is said to be “heat treated” by a knifemaker it has been quenched and tempered, probably to a knife-like hardness such as 60 Rc.

“Annealed” is the soft condition ready for cutting, grinding, machining, etc. and is also ready for the final heat treating step. Most steel is provided as annealed to the knifemaker. If the knifemaker is forging his knives then an annealing step is often performed after forging but before grinding and final hardening.
 
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