First off, I'm a total newbie so I lack a lot of knowledge. My issue is with hardening some sheffield 1084 I recently purchased from Pop's. My process was as follows:
Shaped knife and added bevels to 90% of completion. Normalized steel using propane forge...color was orange and allowed to cool. Probably way to hot. Did two more cycles with slightly less time, pretty sure all were.to hot. Quenched at orange (too hot) and tempered 2 cycles at 420 degrees for 2 hours. File tested and after cutting through the scale it still bit into the blade. Normalized again to red orange and quenched just above non-magnetism. Dark red color. Possibly to cold. Tempered again and the file still bites. I I did place the knife edge on a piece of the original bar and hot a couple times with a hammer and the knife didn't show any damage, but the bar stock did so.it got a wee bit hard anyway. I decided to test a scrap piece and break it. I didn't normalize but went to a higher red heat and quenched. There are prominentstreaks of gold in areas. My question is what's the gold in the grain (carbon) and will normalizing distribute this properly?
Shaped knife and added bevels to 90% of completion. Normalized steel using propane forge...color was orange and allowed to cool. Probably way to hot. Did two more cycles with slightly less time, pretty sure all were.to hot. Quenched at orange (too hot) and tempered 2 cycles at 420 degrees for 2 hours. File tested and after cutting through the scale it still bit into the blade. Normalized again to red orange and quenched just above non-magnetism. Dark red color. Possibly to cold. Tempered again and the file still bites. I I did place the knife edge on a piece of the original bar and hot a couple times with a hammer and the knife didn't show any damage, but the bar stock did so.it got a wee bit hard anyway. I decided to test a scrap piece and break it. I didn't normalize but went to a higher red heat and quenched. There are prominentstreaks of gold in areas. My question is what's the gold in the grain (carbon) and will normalizing distribute this properly?