Annealing

[DANA HOLMAN]

Guys
I'm having trouble with annealing some 1080. What is the best thing to use for cooling the blade. I have been letting it cool in the air I have forged the blade and normalized it 3 times but after annealing it seams to be very hard
thanks
Dana

[LAR43]

Dana,
If you have a bunch of wood ashes try them. Vermiculite, or powdered limestone both work & are available from your garden center.

Or, I just leave it in the forge after I shut down for the night & pick it up the next day.

Larry

[DANA HOLMAN]

Larry
I have some lime but not sure it's limestone I guess it would be the same, the lime I have is a white power.
Thanks

[prarieboy]

Dana I'm probably not gonna help..... But I anneal files and chunks of plow steel in My fire pit or the Charcol grill! Just get a good bed of coals under it and over it then let it cool down naturaly. Works for Me.

[Ragnarok Forge]

Letting the steel cool in air from non-magnetic is normalizing which it sounds like what you are doing.  Annealing is taking the hot steel to non-magnetic and then sticking it in vermiculite, wood ashes, or just leaving it in a recently turned off forge overnight.  The very slow cooling of the steel provides for maximum grain growth and steel softness.  

It sounded like you might be annealing after normalizing which would be out of sequence in most cases.

[LAR43]

Dana,
The limestone I have is powdery feeling, like the stuff they line athletic fields with. Bought it at H.D., it says powdered on the bag.

If it's the granular type I'd think it will work also.

If you have the patience, just let it cool down in the forge. That seems to work the best for me.

Larry

[DANA HOLMAN]

Thanks guys for the info  I may be off on my thinking. If I take flat bar and forge it onto a knife. Do I then normalize it, and then anneal it before grinding the blade out. That's what I was thinking but my head get turned around from time to time
thanks again
Dana

[Ragnarok Forge]

I like to anneal after the blade is forged to shape.  I then perform any grinding that is needed to get it close to the final shape I want, then triple normalize the blade to remove all of the stresses created in the steel from the forging.  

The only time I would anneal after normalizing is if I overheated the steel to a point where the grain size increased to much.  At that point I would anneal and then triple normalize the blade again to ensure proper grain size prior to hardening the blade.

[DANA HOLMAN]

Thanks Lowell I understand now, back to the forge I go
Dana