from Kevin, "If, however you just normalized the steel instead of spheroidizing it, the entire grain will be filled with fine alternating lamellae of iron and carbon which will mix together evenly much quicker. Thus shortening soak time, but also tearing up your tools much worse since wide sheets of carbide are a bit more immovable than tiny beads of carbide. The shortest soak times, if any, will be needed when heating a hardened piece of steel since the carbon is already in solution from being trapped there in order to harden the steel. But this is also not set in stone since much will depend on the rate of heating"
Just wondering if maybe multiple quench cycles increase the percentage of martensite formation while shortening soak times, keeping expansion uniform and reducing warpage...
... or maybe all the warpage is thermal distortion from uneven heat loss? But shouldn't it return to original proportions when temperature equalizes?
???
