Had a chat with a customer that made me rethink my heat treat process

So this guy comes in last week with a busted hammer he wanted me to fix, and he starts asking about my normalizing steps. I told him I usually just do two cycles, and he looked at me like I had three heads. He said he works with a guy up in Flagstaff who does three full cycles plus a stress relief after every major weld, even on small tools. I kinda blew it off at first, but then I thought about it later that night. I tried three cycles on a damaged farrier rasp I was turning into a knife, and the grain structure looked way more uniform on the break test. Now I'm wondering if I've been leaving toughness on the table for years with all my repair jobs. Any of you guys do extra normalizing cycles on stuff that's been banged up hard?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_sage23d ago

Three normalizing cycles? Man, that guy in Flagstaff must have a lot of free time on his hands. I can barely find the patience to do two without getting distracted by something shiny or a cup of coffee. But I'll be honest, I tried the triple cycle on an old truck axle I was turning into a pry bar, and the spark test looked way cleaner than my usual junk. It's like the metal finally decided to behave after the third round of heat. Now I'm sitting here wondering how many hours of my life I've wasted with half-baked normalizing. You might be right about leaving toughness on the table, but I'm not sure my attention span can handle the upgrade.

the_keith23d ago

Heck, my old man used to say you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat their anvils, and that's how I got into collecting rusty horseshoes.