Mr. ern26, yes your questions are answered in the stickies, and yes they are some of the most common questions we answer here in the forums. But you have come here with specific questions about specific steels, AISI numbers and all, with a specific, well formulated quench oil in mind, and this demonstrates to me that you have a serious approach to the venture you are undertaking. This approach is the kind that inspires me to keep typing and answering questions and look forward to the blades you may produce one day.
Now to the questions:
Normalizing is for the purpose of returning the internal condition of the steel to an equalized and normal condition after forging and other operations that can wreak havoc on it. The number one man key to normalizing is to do everything evenly, or it really isnt normalizing. For these steels heat them the first time to well above critical. Critical should actually be around 1475F-1500F, not nonmagnetic which is actually around 50F lower than this, but by the time you get the whole blade nonmagnetic in a forge it will be in the right range anyhow, just take it a little bit higher. Although I hate using color descriptions for temperatures- nice bright orange in a dark room, but never yellow or white. Allow the blade to air cool.
Next heat the blade just as evenly to just nonmagnetic and allow it to air cool.
On the last heat go for a very dull red and DO NOT allow the blade to loose magnetism and allow to air cool.
Technically the first heat was the only one that can be called normalizing but bladesmiths call all these thermal cycles that. The last dull red heat even doubles as an annealing operation, and is really THE way to do the 1095, 1084 can be stuffed in vermiculate or the forge for the night at critical but 1095 should not, and 1084 will work pretty well with the dull red treatment as well.
If your blades are under ¼ in thickness the 11 second oil should get you to where you are going; the 1095 may even give you a natural hamon without even trying.
Once again the temp you are really shooting for is 1475F but in a forge, on your first attempts, I am certain you will get there, and then some, just trying to go totally non-magnetic. You dont really nee to worry about the tang at this point of your knifemaking but you will get the most strength from the blades by heating the entire blade evenly to non-magnetic and hardening as much as you can.
Once again for maximum blade strength you will want to harden it all and then temper it all evenly. The torch on the spine is great for bending blades in an ABS type bend test but we really shouldnt want actual using knives to easily bend, we should want them to resist bending- that is why we want strength.
I would strongly suggest that you walk before you run and do a few fully quenched blades successfully and understand the process well before moving on to controlling the hamon with clay ashi lines, this will allow you to get a grasp of the hamon much better. Also, as I mentioned, if the blades approach 3/16 to ¼ at the spine they will probably automatically give you hamon in many oils.
I personally would not use the 2 brick forge thing. The best results I get from heat treating when using a forge, even better than serious gas forges, is to make a coal or charcoal (real, not briquettes) fire in a forge and build a brick tunnel over the fire to create an oven type chamber with both ends open. Heat the blade spine down in the coals while keeping the tip out the other end until the last moment.
As for tests, you really cant bend every blade to 90 and still have any knives to use afterwards, and this a great test of a smiths ability to control heat but it really doesnt tell you anything about how the knife will perform as a knife. Knives cut things and should continue to easily cut for as long as possible, the properties that would allow them to bend are in direct opposition to this prime function.
The brass rod test is fine, just understand wholly what it is telling you and what it cannot tell you. Despite what you will overwhelmingly hear from smiths it cannot tell you almost anything about your heat treat. Flex is not a function of heat treatment, flexing is wholly a function of geometry, these are facts based on physical laws that bladesmiths cannot change. Heat treatment can determine how the flex will fail when you have gone too far, but then it is rather a moot point. Dont get me wrong, if you totally blow the heat treatment the edge will indeed chip in this use and any other. In the old Solingen knifeworks that smiths refer to in order to give weight to this test, there was a guy who flexed the edges over a round, but he did not do this in the heat treating department, he stood behind the man at the grinder to check if he was doing his job correctly. So use the bras rod thing to determine consistent edge geometry on your blades, and leave hardness testing to hardness testers.
Find a friend, here or otherwise, to do proper hardness test for you and this, combined with other tests such as the rod and cutting will give you the entire picture. But be aware that you cannot take accurate Rockwell readings on the edge bevels of a knife. Practice, practice, practice and then heat treat some test coupons with steps ground into them to check you heat treating process.
I personally find the most useful knife test to be in cutting things, that is after all what it is all about. Cut a wide range of things, cardboard, leather, wood etc
and see how the edge wears. A test with a brass rod that I like better than flexing is chopping! Take a good whack at a brass rod and see how the edge handles it. This will tell you a whole lot about your edge geometry as well as how much impact toughness your process is giving to the blades.
I hope this all helps.
