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Took me 6 months to stop dunking hot steel in the water bucket, now I just let it sit on the bricks
I picked up a bad habit early on from a video I watched around month two of smithing. Every piece that came off my anvil went straight into the slack tub, hiss and steam, felt like I was doing something right. Problem was I kept getting cracks in the steel, mostly on the smaller stuff like bottle openers and a couple of hooks. I probably wrecked 8 or 9 pieces before it clicked. A guy at a hammer-in in Ohio asked me why I was quenching a piece I wasn't hardening, and I didn't have an answer. Now I just lay the hot piece on a brick pile near the forge and let the air do the work. Wait time went from 30 seconds to maybe 20 minutes, which felt like forever at first. Turns out the cracks were from the fast cool, not from anything I did with the hammer. So what do you all do with smaller pieces you aren't hardening? Just air cool them on the floor or do you have a specific spot?
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