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I've made a number of knives from 1095 which seems to have thus far, worked out well. 1095 will harden in Canola but from my research, you're just marginally there. I've also noted, relatively NEW canola does fine. After 10 or so quenches, it seems to quit hardening. Don't know why, the color of the oil does change somewhat so perhaps the properties change as well. Something gets burned out? Dunno... But I learned early on to use fresh oil as much as possible.
But like has been noted, it is generally accepted that Canola is the fastest vegetable quenching oil but still only marginally acceptable for 1095.
It works very well with 0-1 which is a slower quenching steel. But then temp control pre-quench is more critical with 0-1. It needs a longer "soak" at critical temperature and that's very difficult to obtain and control in a forge.
If you are committed to 1095 and want to really learn and use 1095 you probably need to get some Parks 50.
Anyway, unless you're heating a couple gallons of oil, a glowing hot railroad spike will get the oil too hot. As noted, use a meat or candy thermometer and only heat it to 125?-130-ish?. For reference, that's nice warm shower temperature, not scalding. If you can hold your finger in it, and it's nice and warm but not scalding you're close. If you can't hold your finger in it, it's too hot.
So this may be helpful if you want to just keep it simple for now. Forge knives, have fun.
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