Thread: Basic questions for forging a razor

[QUOTE=Bruno;
Basically, when you heat treat 1095, you have a second or so to drop the temperature. If you don't cool down that fast, your 1095 will still be soft enough to bend.
[COLOR="#008080"]So logically, if you aircool it after the last heat (holding it in tongs, not laying it on the cold anvil) it will be soft enough to work.[/COLOR]


I cooled by leaving it in the forge after I let it go out.

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

Okay. I like your forge and your annealing method. .

I noticed most have air flow source as some sort of blower, I'm using an air compressor at 100 - 120 pounds blowing thru a water heater burner bolted to botton of a wok.

I hesitate to offer advice on this topic, but the current consensus seem to be what Bruno said and then some in that you are risking a number of undesirable things by letting a simple hypereutectoid steel like 1095 cool any slower than air cooling unless you can let it cool at a VERY slow controlled rate for hours in oder to get the aforementioned spheroidized structure. Even for the the alloyed stuff, unless you have an oven and can run it for 10 hours at a time, air cooling and a "subcritical anneal"/high temper at say 1200 after you do your normalizing/gain reduction cycles may be your best best. I do a stress relief cycle at that same temp after grinding. This applies to steel with more than .85% carbon like 1095, O1, O2, W2, etc. Stuff like 1084 or 1075 is tougher to mess up.