[triw]

A question on the difference between normalizing and annealing when making a knife.

My understanding from reading an artical by Ed Caffrey is that Normalizing is heating a blade to non magnetic and allowing it to cool to room temp while setting in a draft free area. This is to allow the internal stress to relax in the metal.
Annealing is heating to non magnetic and then placing the blade in a well insolated materal so the blade cools very slowly. This reduces grain size of the steel.

My question is would not annealing do the same thing as normalizing? I am not understanding why you need to do both. Thank you for any help in my understanding of this confussing (to me anyway) subject.
William