# Re-hardening a blade



## nelsonchenknives (May 9, 2020)

Hi all, 

I'm back with another basic heat treat question. I've been working on some hamon blades, and from time to time, I'll fail to get a soft spine and thus need to re-do the heat treat. My question is do I need to normalize the already hardened blade before re-hardening the blade? and if so, what kind of normalizing cycles should I run for 26c3 steel? the blade is a flat blank at 65 RHC through out, no forging or grinding at all. 

I asked my material science friend, and he's leaning towards not doing any additional process and go straight to austenizing temp and then quench, but I thought I would get a second opinion here. 

Thanks!!


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## inferno (May 9, 2020)

no. just re-ht.

the more times you HT the finer the grain will get and at some point it will get counterproductive and you will start losing hardness and toughness. i usually do 2 quenches. because it simply takes 1 to dial **** in and then a real one. i'm working with gas.


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## nelsonchenknives (May 9, 2020)

that's good to know. 

i've been running one or two normalizing cycles in between, so i'm glad i can cut some unnecessary steps out of my process.


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