ORIGINAL: 1wrongbrother
.... last week I went to bend a 5/32 one cold in the vise and it exploded in three pieces and it did not take much pressure.....I then took a scrap piece heated it with a propane torch and it was so much easier to bend and get an precise angle, it did not seem to take the temper out too bad probably because I only heated it till it started to bend to avoid annealing it.
So well said. No one really knows what hardness the steel they are working with will be, until it's too late. Safer to heat it, as you said, until it starts to bend easily, not red hot.