Adding distal taper

I looked that stuff up.

Normalizing works faster than annealing but is primarily a way to get a better uniform grain structure in the steel.
In Forged In Fire you sometimes see smiths cooling down their blades by waving them in the air.

Full annealing is primarily a way to get the steel as ductile and malleable as possible, but takes more time, some hours.
Both procsses reduce hardness but to a different degree, annealing more, normalizing less.

The steel has to be quenched afterwards to get his sword hardness (back).
Both need an oven that reaches temperatures high over a kitchen oven.
So that doesn't work for people with only a kitchen oven.

Process annealing seem to work with temperatures an kitchen oven can create but is primarily for just work hardened steel.
Quenched steel seems to be not affected.

I've read here from using a kitchen oven for blades tempered too soft (the ca. 2009 Gen2 problems) but don't have an idea how this could work.