The day my 8 year old anvil proved I'd been quenching wrong

I've been forging knives for close to a decade, mostly on a beat-up 110 pound anvil from a farm sale outside Eugene. Last month I got a proper hardness tester and ran my latest blade, it came in at 52 HRC instead of the 58-60 I thought I was hitting. Turns out I was pulling the steel out of the oil too early, waiting for the color to change like an old timer told me, when the real trick is timing the quench to the exact second. Anyone else had a core habit they never questioned until a tool called them out, and what did you switch to?

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the_seth16d ago

...so I feel this in my bones. I spent two years trusting my eyes to tell me when the steel was done, because some guy at a gun show swore by the "straw color" method. Then I bought a $40 thermometer and found out I was quenching at like 170 degrees too hot, basically ruining every blade I made in that time. My anvil didn't call me out, but my first broken tip did, right through a test piece of rebar. Now I just set a timer on my phone and watch the clock like a hawk, feels dumb but at least my knives actually hold an edge now.