Showerthought: I keep seeing people skip the normalization step after forging

Been watching a lot of online videos and even saw it at a local meet in Knoxville last month. Folks will forge a blade, maybe do a thermal cycle, then go straight to the quench. They're leaving out the normalization step to even out the grain structure from all that hammering. I learned the hard way about six months ago when a nice leaf spring knife cracked right along the weld line after quenching. My old teacher, who ran a shop for forty years, always said 'forge, normalize, then harden' like a mantra. It adds maybe an extra hour to the process with the heats and cool downs, but it makes the steel predictable. Without it, you're just locking in all the stress and weird grain from the forge. Has anyone else had a piece fail because they rushed past normalization?

3 comments

3 Comments

reese_nelson1mo ago

Used to skip it to save time, figured the quench was the main event. Lost a good blade to a crack that traced the grain lines perfectly. Now I never forge without normalizing first.

harper_white1mo ago

Saw a buddy snap a camp knife he'd worked on for weeks, classic normalization skip like @reese_nelson said. The crack showed the exact hammer pattern from his press.

henderson.oscar1mo ago

Yeah, "forge, normalize, then harden" is the real deal. My first good blade warped like a banana in the quench because I skipped it. That extra hour saves so much heartache later.