I am lousy with names and terms, I am bad about using less than correct terminology. so I will be careful here.
After normalizing I check to make sure the blade is straight, some times it curves, or even cork screws if it was not hammered evenly. Especially when twisted cores in my pattern welded blades.
when all is normalized, and I am sure it straight I will then anneal, ( it IS a second normalizing in the sense of relaxing the stress that may have gotten missed the first time, some do this 3x, I don't feel its worth it for three times)
yes the grains grows a little bit, but that will not be a problem, as another normalizing cycle comes after grinding, and before the hardening. Annealing mainly makes the steel easier to work.
so Yes annealing IS going to relax the steel Just as normalizing.
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