Heat treat turnaround on my first real blade took 3 weekends

I kept fighting with warping on 1084 stock, figured it was my quench oil temp or something fancy, turns out it was just my anvil being too close to the forge and letting it cool uneven. Spent two Saturdays chasing oxides and a third one just letting the blade normalize in the oven overnight before grinding, that was the fix. Anyone else wasted a whole weekend on something this simple before they gave in and tried the boring solution?

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alice99115d ago

The whole "letting it normalize in the oven overnight" thing hit home for me. I spent a solid month fighting with 1095 blades that kept warping, tried every fancy quench oil trick I could find online, then finally just left a blade sitting in a warm oven for a few hours before grinding and it came out dead straight. Sometimes the boring fix is the real fix, and that stings a little because it makes you feel like you overthought everything for no reason. I still keep a notebook of all my dumb mistakes like that, mostly so I don't repeat them.