well that makes me feel a little bit more common since than i thought.  thats pretty wild that just a simple involuntary act could make such a huge effect on steel.  as always i learn something new everyday on here.  thanks lin

Lin would it still be possible to forge the steel without it cracking if you annealed it first?  Or is it once hardened the shows over?

Barry, If the spiderweb cracks had not taken place, we could have annealed or just normalized it and it would have been fine. Most likely the steel itself was not ruined. It was just coming apart.  Of course that meant we could not use it for our purposes. A person could go ahead and break it all up in little pieces and arrange a stack and forge weld it back into one piece and still have a usable steel.

The steel had cracked while sitting in a fully hardened state. The cracks were so small we could not see them under the scale. An anneal would not keep it from cracking since they already were in place and were merely becoming manifest when we hammered the material.

Someone asked why a file dont crack because it is so hard. It's hard but not full hard. They do draw them back just enough to stabilize them.

Also, when the steel was allegedly hardened while stirring the oil, I imagine he OVER heated it which is the perfect recipe for cracking. The grain was huge. The guys at the event broke a few pieces of it and it was BIG. I was busy and did not watch where on the bar they broke it or anything. I'm mostly using deduction to try to explain this.

Good to know what happened.  This is a nice reminder to have dedicated tools for each task and to leave your knife steel out of the tool stack.

Lin,

You guys forgot the first day what I know about making knives! I'm better at buying them.

Just a guess after reading all the options. Any chance your friend that handed you the steel had it cyrogenically (sp)treated first? If I was going to mess with some Masters this is what would come across my mind.

No, I dont think so Dave. I'm pretty sure considering some things I have seen ...him do. I dont think he even is aware of the problem.