work hardening- will it cause problems during heat treat?

[Matt Shade]

For some reason this thought just hit me as I was working on one of my knives today. Are work hardened knives more likely to NOT survive heat treat due to stress points or anything? Will work hardening effect final hat treat in any way? You would think that whatever hardening was done during machining would be to insignificant to effect the steel during its proper heating and quenching which would involve much higher temperatures for longer intervals and then more controlled quenching. I can also see how if the steel is hard in some spots and soft in others, it could come out uneavenly hardened or have stress fractures during quenching. But I don't know a whole lot about the heat treating other than the general process.
So what do you guys think?

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It'll feel better when it stops hurting.

 

[lively]

I always normalize before the heat treatment to relieve stress. Actually I consider normalizing part of the heat treatment. I believe most professional heat treaters do too. I forge my blades so I normalize 3 times but it is good practice to normalize at least once with stock removal too.

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