General Heat Treating Questions

[Sgt_Bobbo]

Hello All,

I have a few questions regarding the process of properly heat treating my very first knife. I have my blade made of 1095 steel finished as much as I can before I begin heat treating. I bought the steel for Jantz and in the description it says it has already been annealed. However, during my removal and shaping (using an angle grinder) I heated up some of the areas to a cherry red. I am not sure if I messed up the annealing of the steal so I would like to normalize the blade to be safe.

So how can I normalize without a kiln or forge? I don't really want to send the blade off to someone else. I was going to harden the blade by using a torch only but I am not sure I can normalize the blade with this method. I watched several videos before I started and none of them showed the normalizing or annealing process. In fact most of the videos I watched only heated the blades up with a mini forge or torch and then quenched.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[samuraistuart]

To normalize 1095, you need to bring it to 1600F and let it air cool. With a torch, this will be sorta difficult, especially longer knives. Short knives will be easier. Get a magnet handy. Begin to heat the blade up with your torch, painting an even heat as best you can. You'll notice it turn dull red, then red, then sorta orange. Somewhere in that red state, around 1414F-1425F, the magnet will stop sticking to the steel. But you need to get another 175F+. So you'll need to reach that shade of orange of 1600F, and will be VERY easy to overshoot that temp and then blow the grain up with a torch.

 

[Sgt_Bobbo]

So try to reach that orange shade and then remove from heat immediately and let air cool? Or try to keep it at 1600 for a few minutes? Thank you for the reply as well.

 

[samuraistuart]

If you can hold it at that shade a few minutes, even better. Hard to judge that temp by eye, even harder to hold it a few minutes, using a torch.