Is the grain structure of a mid to high carbon steel (5160, 8670, 1075,1084) slow cooled in vermiculite fairly close to that when it is air cooled or normalized? In other words, is slow cooling considered a kind of normalizing? 

the slow cooling is annealing, Just cycling from above  critical to below is normalizing

Thanks. Learning more about grain structure is fascinating and helpful. Didn’t normalize a 5160 herb chopper and had some really interesting lateral splits, looked like delaminations, when working a really thin scroll on the handle. 

On 12/29/2019 at 3:11 PM, Steve Sells said:

the slow cooling is annealing, Just cycling from above  critical to below is normalizing

So normalizing results in a more fine grained structure?

yes annealing results in large grain