caintuckrifle Posted June 1, 2015 Share Posted June 1, 2015 Can someone help me understand the difference between annealing and normalizing carbon steel. From my understanding both require the stock to be heated to the critical temperature and then cooled slowly. As far as I know in both cases the particles realine and the lattice is refined yielding a soft workable piece. Is normalizing just only used the context before heat treating versus before further working?Is their a difference and what is it? This may be a newbie question but maybe you guys can help me understand!Thanks! Caintuckrifle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Sells Posted June 1, 2015 Share Posted June 1, 2015 I hope someone can explain this to you better than my pinned post already did. I cant think of any simpler way to explain it, what is confusing to you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted June 1, 2015 Share Posted June 1, 2015 It would be hard to beat Steves pind post for acurat and understandible. The brif senopsis is that aneiling is specificaly for making the steel as soft as posible, in simple carbon steels that is to heat it to above critical, let soke for a. very short time and to cool very slowly, usualy in an insulative medium such as wood ash. Normalisation is to reduce/relive stresses imparted by forging, welding or other process and starts again with heating to just above critical and then alowing the steel to cool slowly, still air is usualy suffcent for insulation. Simple carbon steel becomes non magnetic just above critical, but table salt melts at a just a hair above. Aloy steels may requre different mesures, usualy longer soak times, as do larger sections. Now this is just a thumb nail of Steves pined post, he has a lot more experiance with aloy steel, and thin sections, wich even in simple carbon steels may air quench or do other strangeness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Turley Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 How do I find Steve Sells pinned post on annealing & normalizing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crantius Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 third post in this very forum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SReynolds Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 I asked a knife maker. He said it is the same thing. He sells knives. he would know........... He should know but apparently he does not Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 So did you ask him about edge packing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 My feed store sells horse shoes, they must know how to shoe a horse...maybe not. Annealing is meant to get the steel as soft as possible, and can differ wildly from alloy to alloy, normalizing is to reduce induced stress in the steel, again this can differ from alloy to alloy. Now annealing should anneal the steel, but normalizing usually wont fully anneal a piece of steel. See Steve I can read, lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SReynolds Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Why? I wanted to know why there are two terms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Because they are slightly diferent operations to produce two diferent results.the chemesstry acualy changes, or more persisly the molectular strucktur of the steel changes as its heated and cooled, the longer it is held at temp and the longer it takes to cool the greater that change. Anealing is ment to get the steel as soft as posible to make machining operations easer, such as drilling, filing etc. wile normalizing reduces stresses induced by forging that can cause warping and even cracking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 (edited) Normalizing is to get dislocation climb; annealing is to get to a structure that is as soft as you can get. (Patrick can correct me here; it's been about 40 years since that MatSci class) Edited September 22, 2015 by ThomasPowers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SReynolds Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 He probably told me they are the same thing to shut me up or give a quick answer. Or possibly he thought I'd be making knives.......less competition so let's screw with him. I don't make knives. I want to make nail headers and hot punches. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 May verywell not know the difference Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wpearson Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 Can someone help me understand the difference between annealing and normalizing carbon steel. From my understanding both require the stock to be heated to the critical temperature and then cooled slowly. As far as I know in both cases the particles realine and the lattice is refined yielding a soft workable piece. Is normalizing just only used the context before heat treating versus before further working?Is their a difference and what is it? This may be a newbie question but maybe you guys can help me understand!Thanks! CaintuckrifleThe difference is the rate of cooling. normalizing= cooling in still air. annealing= cooling in dry wood ash or vermiculite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SReynolds Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 some have advertised they anneal by inserting the work into the fire at days end and allow the fire to cool. Probably works well if it's a large deep fire. Not a small rivet forge. From the description above I only normalize. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles R. Stevens Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 Low carbon/low aloy steels its pretymuch one and the same Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricJergensen Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 As you suspect and Charles points out, "everyday" steels work with these rules of thumb. The full answer is: to properly work your steel, read the datasheet and follow the instructions. For high-alloy steels, cooling in still air might harden and cooling in vermiculite might not even result in normalization. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Sells Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 and a few of you try to "normalize" will just about ruin the steel, of course anyone that actuals read the spec sheets, as recomended knows this, the rest are just posting to see themselves in print. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anvil Posted November 16, 2015 Share Posted November 16, 2015 Annealing and normalizing are not the same. A way to think of the heat treating process is that to reach a fully hardened state, you must start from a fully annealed state. Annealing brings you down to max softness, a ground zero. Hardening does the opposite. If you are not at "ground zero, all else will not apply. All this is my paraphrase from Turley Forge many moons ago. I recently had this verified in a good book called " Metalurgy of steel for bladesmiths and others who heat treat and Forge steel" by John D Verhover. He states that all the data in the stats sheets and phase change charts and graphs are based on a fully annealed piece of steel. I believe the reason that many knife makers have this notion that anneal is not needed or is the same as normalizing is because they tend to start out doing stock removal from steel bought from a supplier. Since all tool steel purchased comes fully annealed, there is no reason to anneal again after stock removal . They can go straight to hardening. Again from Turley Forge, stock removal can stress the steel especially if you remove a lot of material. He recommended annealing anyway. So it is part of my routine. We blacksmiths most often may start with annealed steel but once it's brought up past critical to a forging heat (bright orange to yellow) the structure is changed (at critical) and must be annealed as part of the HT process. A great and simple test to show the importance of annealing over "just normalizing" is to make two simple tools you use a lot. Centerpunch, small cold chisel, scribe are examples in my shop. Just normalize, harden, temper one and anneal, harden, temper the other. Use them equally and see how long it takes to lose yer edge. I've never been much for normalizing as part of my HT process, but all my tool steel drop is air cooled after use to make sure I don't end up with a hardened end that would dull my tools otherwise when used again. I don't use air hardening steels by the way. However I'm reevaluating the importance of "refined grain structure" in my tools. This is the primary importance of normalizing. Even if it makes a "better" product, the difference may not be noticeable for the tooling we do. If we were doing springs for the space shuttle, that might be different. However the time to normalize is minimal. Note! Any differences between what Frank attempted to hammer into my head and what actually got there are my responsibility,,, no one else's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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