Today I finished forging and hardened several woodworking tools.  Immediately after quenching I cleaned them up a bit on the belt grinder and then used the dragon's breath of the forge to bring most of the tool length up to a nice blue, with a deep straw color at the cutting edge.  These were made from leaf spring and coil spring.  The question is once tempering has been done that way is there any real benefit to a "soak" type of temper for a couple hours?  For knives I normally do 2 temper cycles for 2 hours each one day apart at a specific temperature. Everything I've read indicates that time at temperature is important or at least desirable, but if this question has been asked before I didn't find it in my search.

well my metallurgical texts say time at temp is not as effective as multiple tempering runs.

Hmm.  So that indicates there would probably be some benefit to cleaning them up and running the colors out again - at least more than a soak at deep straw temperature.

If you are doing the soak from ambient then it's a second tempering run---knifemakers generally do 3 (diminishing returns)

In the same boat, but (my) forged tools from spring are used to cut steel. The color is run to the cutting end (a straw range color or bronze. I can't tell difference in the 50° increments) but the tools dent when striking (cutting) mild steel. I guess deforming is better than breaking, eh? With wood tools, I suppose a sharp edge over time is preferred over dulling or cracking.

Sure I can buy them factory made. But I'd like this technique on my resume.

Straw should cut metal.  Was there any decarb issues?  What did you quench them in and at what temp?