Annealing is always done by heating the steel red hot and slowly cooling by burying the steel in a bucket of lime (or wood ash).
In my humble experence O-1 and 1095 are effectivey hardened, tempered and annealed in like manner.
I do buy Starrett ground stock for springmaking and also have a small box full of assorted sizes and thicknesses of annealed 1095 given to me be an oldtime Tool & Die maker when he retired. Surely a lifetime supply of tool steel for springmaking, but is is all flat sheet stock and not particularly suited to making chisels and scrapers in qualtity.
