Bend test basics

I have always had a question about the hardness testers used by knife makers and their ability to test different areas in the same steel.
My guess is that the normal curves of a blade could be a challenge, but what if you just had some straight bar stock?

One day Im going to send to be tested a few samples from my forge to see if the tester could find out what I attempted to harden, where I attempted to make very soft?

Allen..my 'yes' response was originaly in reply to your 'test piece' as being flat.

I have a hardness tester, but I can only rely on readings from flat clean surfaces (I full harden and use the ricasso or tang to test..or sometimes harden and temper then get my readings before I grind the bevels)....If your going to throw in some angled bevels, then I would not be able to rely on scale readings being accurate.....

However, using just rockwell hardness files, its still possible to pick up the hard and softer zones on bevelled edge hardened blades........even a plain file can pick up the difference....try it.
 
even a plain file can pick up the difference....try it.
I do the file trick before I temper , just to make sure.
I etch my blades after I have tempered them and sanded them up clean.
But the etch does not show how hard or soft things are. I think it just shows that there is some form of difference in the steel at differeent points.

I guess I have always had a question in the back of my mind about if the hardness on an edge-quench blade goes up the sides of the too far near the spine and would then lead to a snapped blade in the 90/180 bend tests?

I also wanted to know if a normal hardness tester could tell the difference between well tempered steel, and steel that did not get a good enough temper even if both were quenched the same way?
 
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