A brief discussion of terms.....

[kbaknife]

.....hope you don't mind!     :D  

I've recently observed some slight and/or considerable misuse of our knife making terms. And it happens all the time in numerous places, and I only bring this up so that in our conversations, we can all refer to the SAME thing.
Sometimes guys say they "heat treated" their knife. I know they meant that they HARDENED their knife.
Some guys say they "tempered" their knife, and I know they both meant the same thing! But neither one of them say they "hardened" their knife.
So, to clarify "heat treating", we must point out that heat treatment means "treating with heat", and that can include, but is not limited to:
forging
post-forging reducing heats
thermal cycling
spherodizing
annealing
hardening
tempering.
All of those steps are "heat treating", and are included in "heat treatment".
There are more steps involved in "heat treatment" dependent upon steel type.
Tempering is only one step of "heat treating". It is the post-hardening step to reduce stresses and hardness as a result of martensite creation.
Hardening is only one step of "heat treating" as it results in a transformation from pearlite to martensite - which is hard.
etc.
I just had to toss that up there for all of our benefits so we can understand what we each mean in our discussions. You know, what STEP we're referring to and so on.
Don't get mad at me for sticking my nose in.  

[Ray Hammond]

This is good Karl . I'm guilty of imprecision - probably much more than most because I have so much to learn!!!