Heat Treat

Please excuse my ignorance>>>>What happens if you don' t heat treat your 1095 or 01 steel blades??

They will hold an edge about as well as any piece of mild steel you would find in a hardware store.

The majority of blade steel comes annealed which means the steel is in a state soft enough to drill, grind, sand, etc.. If you do not harden and temper it edge holding will be all but non existent. The way the elements that make up the steel are arranged on the atomic level give different forms of steel such as pearlite, martensite, austenite etc.. When done properly, heat treating arranges the elements in the form that gives the qualities desired for a given steel and its intended use. In a knife these qualities are usually hardness, toughness, and abrasion resistance. Hope this makes sense.

Heat treating makes the steel very hard.
Where in very north Florida are you? I'm in the panhandel, near Pensacola.

Calvin I'm in Fort White SW of Lake City

Makes perfect sense, great explanation Thanks