How to anneal 1084?

S

Sprayman

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Nov 15, 2014
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Hello Bladesmiths;

I plan to regrind a couple of knives I made a long time ago while still a novice. They're made from 1084, and I'd like to anneal them before I re-grind them. I have a small gas forge. Any advice, or does anyone know of a sticky thread or video I could reference?

Thanks,
Geron
 
Well, to do a poor man's anneal, you heat it up to nonmagnetic, then stick it in some vermiculite to let it cool.
If you have a big chunk of angle iron or something, you can heat that at the same time and include it in your vermiculite. It'll help hold your high temperature longer, and cool down slower.
That's probably the best you can do without a proper HT oven...
 
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Heat up as much steel as you can in the forge along with the blade in forge. Get soak to dull red for 10 minutes or so, then slowly turn down heat in forge and allow to cool in forge. Try to take a few hrs to cool completely in forge. Using Vermiculite is best, but without having to buy extra the forge will help some.
 
If you are worried about the old HT being bad. normalize it then do a simple anneal.
1) Heat to full red and let cool to black.
2) Heat to just past non-magnetic and cool to black.
3) Heat to just past non-magnetic and quench.
4) Heat to dull red below non-magnetic and let cool to black. Repeat this step a few times.

That will get the steel back to a good pearlite condition and ready for a new HT after regrinding.
If you want to follow it by a slow anneal like the other guys mentioned, that will be OK, but probably isn't necessary.
 
I was thinking "anneal" to get metal in a soft condition for drilling, grinding, etc. If preparing for new HT, then Stacy is correct. Stacy always has good info.
 
If they are already ground and just need to be cleaned up, I don't think you should take them back to annealed. If your lo
oking to re heat treat them, I would go with Devin on that for sure. If the ht is good and you just need to clean them up, just take your time grinding them. You can grind bevels on fully heat treated steel just fine....just watch your blade temps.
 
DevinT said:
Warm up the forge, not too hot, heat the blade to a dull red, turn off the forge, block up the ends, let it cool.

Hoss
Click to expand...
This.... No need to do multiple heats at high temps. It's a simple sub-critical anneal. Get it red but still magnetic. You are basically tempering the hell out of it, without too much change to the internal structure.
 
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