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As you have noted from Kevin Cashen's work that if you hold the 1095 under 1500? the length of soak will not have a negative effect on grain growth even on that simple of a steel. Another thing to consider is putting too much carbon into solution which I don't think is a problem if you keep your austenizing temperature down to around 1450-1475 the length of soak doesn't mean that much. Anyway, if you did form too much retained austenite you can correct for it with multiple tempering cycles. I wouldn't recommend cryo-treatment for something as simple as 1095. All you will be doing is just making your steel cold.
One thing on measuring HRc on 1095. It's a shallow hardening steel and, depending on the fineness of the grain, is self limiting as to how far through the the blade it will harden, basically twice the depth of penetration on something the thinness of a knife blade. This means that even though the edge may will harden up to, let's say, 1/8" thickness, the spine and the ricasso won't harden at all. That means you won't have two parallel surfaces for the HRc tester that are hardened. Ways around that are to make a coupon that is slightly less than 1/8" and heat treat it and test it or you can use the calibrated hardness testing files on the edge. I know the latter is rather crude but it might be all that is available to you.
Doug
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