Noob question on odd spring steel.

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Hello all. I have a piece of spring steel that I heated and flattened in a fire. It came off a 3 leaf pack on a small equipment trailer. It is 5/16 thick. I am not into big knives, but I figured if I could make one for nothing, I would get to try it out, and who knows, it might be worth what I paid for it.:D
My question is, I have tried to anneal 2 pieces of the stuff. Both were brought to glowing orange, and allowed to slow cool. 1 took about 8 hrs. to get cool enough to touch. After this, the steel was quite hard to file. Enough so that I would not even attempt to do any shaping. Only by using the corner of a good file could I get more than a slight scrape across the metal.:(
One piece I attempted to harden slightly by putting in wood fire coals until red, and then quenching in snow. This piece actually seems softer than the ones I tried to anneal.
Does anyone have any ideas?
I know it is better to start w/ known steel, but I was doing this just for fun, and to see if it could be done.
Thanks in advance for any help.
 
what would help them better is to know what year the vehicle was and if it is the original spring. im no expert on that but i know what helps them out alot and leaves less guessing.
 
You might not have been getting the steel as hot as you thought. Heat it up till a magnet will not stick to it, then try and then get it a little hotter yet. You might heat it in a coal fire that you push air into with a hair dryer. After you get hot enough let the steel cool in a bed of ashes.
 
also, if you can use an enclosed firebox rather than an open fire, the draft is normally routed under the door and through the coal bed on most makes of enclosed fires, and leave the damper open to ensure good airflow through the firebed to get it nice and hot.

I've annealed steel in an outdoor wetback hot water heater fire using gorse wood and once it was burnt down to a dense bed of coals with the steel glowing bright orange shading almost to yellow/white, dumping fine ashes over the coals to hold the heat it. the leaf spring i was annealing was still uncomfortably hot to the touch over 48 hours later.
 
Put it together with several other thick pieces so it holds the heat longer, heat it to 1325 degrees and hold that temp for 30 minutes and leave it in to cool as slowly as possible. I use an electric oven but you can use wood ashes or vermiculite also.
 
Thanks all. I am right now building a small coal forge out of a trucks brake drum. After that I will try to hammer out the knife rather than filing on it. We shall see. Thanks for the input.
 
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