What even just happened I'm so confused.
oh ok. got it.
''dont let your steel touch the left side ... of the ... page... ?''
right, er left?
no right... right?
it's too early
It's a popular steel with people just starting out because it's easy to acquire, inexpensive and unabrasive so it's easy to make a knife shaped object from it.
But it really is not a good steel for beginners because it is so easy to do badly.
It has no grain refinement elements at all and it usually comes with a laminer anneal rather than sphereoidized.
The materials I use have vanadium carbide to pin the grains which prevents grain growth at high temperatures and long soaks which allows me room to do cool things that are not possible with 1095.
This lack of grain refining elements leaves the operation of grain refinement down to the smith or maker, and it's usually not done or done right.
During forging, the edge and the tip get hotter and stay hotter and have larger grain. This is why the tip is sometimes so fragile on some knives made this way. You'll see that on shows like forged in fire.
The fix is a high temperature normalizing cycle followed by grain refining reducing heats before heat treatment. And that heat treatment is tricky because you have to get the whole knife up to the same temperature evenly, but you also cannot leave it at temperature to soak very long or you get grain growth. It's tricky.
Also, that carbon is literally evaporating out of the surface of the steel as CO2 if there is any oxygen present.
It can be a decent steel in some applications, but it's not easy to do right. But it is super easy to do crummy, which is what you usually see.
Heat it up until non-magnetic and then quench it in used motor oil. It'll skate a file. (pearlite can skate a file)
Meh
