annealing 1095,1084,O1, A2 is it .....

[claymoore]

nessesary.

Hey Guys,
I am new to this forum and have a newbee question. I'm kind of a newbee because it takes a long time to master this trade. I have steel from Aldo and i have never annealed any. For some reason i didn't think it needed it with stock removal. But i was talking to a seasoned guy and he said i should all the time. What i have been doing is bringing my paragon up to 1495 degrees and the putting the blade in for a 5:00-10:00 min soak. Should i bring my blanks up to temp first then let them cool and then heat treat & quench. What are your thoughts on annealing, should i always do it or no on his steels. Thanks for any input. Have a great week guys.

[AUBE]

Typically steel comes already annealed. All my steel from Aldo came annealed.

Perhaps the guy you spoke to meant normalized/stress relieved? That is something I think should be done on most steels since it can cut down on warpage when quenching. Each steel will have a different temp you need to attain and the ht schedule from the steel manufacturer should list it.

[Doug Lester]

It's kind of hard to say where your friend was coming from with that statement but some people take a one size fits all approach to heat treating. Don't try to normalize A2; it's air quenching. Also full annealing can cause carbide clumping and cause problems with drilling and brittleness. You might try subcritical anneling if you want to stress relieve the A2. For the others you could do that too or just normalize to relieve stress from grinding.

Doug

[claymoore]

Thank you guys for the quick answers. Just so i understand (please bare with me) i will profile my blade, then anneal/normalize it to for example 1095 to say 1420 degrees, let cool down to room temp and then grind a pre-heat treat edge Then go through the normal heat treat for 1095 like heat to 1480 degrees soake for 5 mins. then quench and temper at 425 degrees for 2 hours x 2. Thank you for the help. Clay

[Crex]

Need to think of "anneal" and "normalize" as two different animals.....they are. That's what Doug was saying. Lot more to annealing than just heating up and letting it cool.
If you got your steel from Aldo, it's already annealed. Normalizing is just smart business with any steel.
Soak time depends on geometry of the blade itself. Bigger/thicker blades need more soak time, smaller thinner blades need less. 5 min. should be fine for 3/32 thick or less. 425* on 1095 is a good starting point, but you need to test the blade for brittleness using brass rod test. Lot of us prefer 450* on 1095.

[claymoore]

Thank you for your time CRex. I appreciate you/all of you guys helping with this GREAT hobby. Have a great rest of the weekend. I see that you CRex have customs site. I'm going to check it out tonight. I could be content just looking and all the great customs and then what happens is i look at the clock and it's 0100 in the morning. lol
Clay

[Crex]

Actually Clay, I don't have a "site". I do have a gallery over on the Georgia Custom Knifemakers' Guild site - www.georgiaknifemakersguild.com