Need info on different metals after annealing

[Kevin the grey]

My buddy made me a nice simple knife for my birthday , He uses stock removal for now and does a fine job . First off he took an almost brand new nicholson bastard file and annealed it he then shaped the knife the way he wanted and then retreated it to as he put it "61 rockwell"

My question is this whenever I pick up a good file I can tell the metal is different . It might be size to weight ratio or something else . You can tell you have a good piece of metal in your hands . After annealing does the metal retain any characteristics of the treatments its received before ? Is the only difference in two annealed metals which were treated differently brfore annealing the difference in the metal itself or can the way a metal is treated affect what it is like after annealing ? If this question isn,t complicated enough for I don,t know what is ! L:O:L

 

[mete]

Depends on what youstarted out with and how you annealed you can get different structures.You may have spheroidized annealed [carbides in spherical form] fine or course.You may have pearlite [carbides in platlet form ] fine or course.

 

[Kevin the grey]

I realise the way I asked the question was a bit confused . (state of mind maybe . Its partially due to my not knowing how to ask it as well .Let me try to clear it up .
Two pieces of the same kind of metal . both are made into tools with different purposes and so are treated differently . both these tools are then annealed . Can there be a difference in these identical pieces of metal after annealing ? Are they both brought back to "zero" or does the treatment they received make a permanent change within them or at least a change not affected by annealing ?

 

[mete]

There can be differences . Whether it can be brought back to 'zero' depends on the steel and what was done to it. What you would try to avoid is coarse carbides since it would be difficult to bring it back.

 

[Kevin the grey]

Thanks for sticking with it Mete . So a nicholson bastard file that was annealed to make it into a knife and then retreated to 61 rockwell wouldn,t have the brittleness of the original File ? It should be a pretty durable knife ?