Why did nobody tell me that drawing out a blade too thin makes it impossible to normalize right

I was watching a video from that guy in Oregon and he showed his grain structure under a microscope after drawing out too thin on a 1095 blade, and I realized I've been ruining my heat treats for the last 6 months.

3 comments

3 Comments

jesse_nguyen24d ago

Think there's a difference between overworking dough and overdrawing steel that folks are missing here. With bread, you're breaking down gluten structures that need to reform later, but with 1095 you're literally changing the steel's grain size by spreading it too thin. I've made this mistake myself, ended up with a blade that looked fine but hardened like glass and snapped in the quench. It's not about pushing something too far in a general sense, it's about understanding that thin cross sections lose heat so fast during normalization that the grain has no time to refine properly.

kareng272mo ago

...and that's the thing with so many hobbies isn't it, you don't realize how small choices pile up until they bite you. I've been baking bread for years and only just figured out that overworking the dough does the same thing, makes the gluten strands too tight and the final loaf comes out dense. You push something too far thinking you're making it better but you're actually breaking the structure underneath.

fiona_lane2mo ago

That "overworking the dough" thing really hit home. I started letting my bread rest longer between kneads and the texture came out way better, took some trial and error but now I just go by feel.