Admiral 1075/1080 Katana HT Help

T

T.J. Fears

Joined
Apr 2, 2013
Messages
6
Hello,
This is my first post on any forum. So far I have made a 13" D2 tanto for myself, a 25" 5160 wakizashi for my son, and a 40" 5160 katana for the wife. All have gone well with great shapes and hardnesses. I have just finished machining a katana for myself from Admiral's 1075/1080 steel. I machined it with negligible heat or distortion. It is time for the heat treat. I went to 1075/1080 because I wanted to get a hamon, and now I am scared. I would hate to crack such a nice looking sword. Someone please tell me how to proceed. I was planning on coating with Imperial's furnace cement and quenching in 120°F water for 3 seconds and finishing in 120°F used motor oil. If I am setting myself up for failure, please interject. I am new to this. Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks,
T.J.
 
http://www.mvforge.com/birthofakatana.htm
The video on Howard Clark's page is pretty bad so I am not sure if that water/oil thing is what he is doing but it sounds like an interesting concept. My only thought is that you may be better off with fast quench oil than the motor oil for the second part.

Whatever you do, please video it so that we can all enjoy a moment of suspense and learn from what you did.
 
You might ask this question over in the Shop Talk subforum. I don't do my own HT, so I can't help you, but Shop Talk would definitely be a good place to ask. I also love doing swords...
 
crimsonfalcon07 said:
You might ask this question over in the Shop Talk subforum. I don't do my own HT, so I can't help you, but Shop Talk would definitely be a good place to ask. I also love doing swords...
Click to expand...

Ditto on this advice, lots of real makers here on this site don't look at the sword forum.
 
I've switch to parks50 but when I was doing water quenches I quenched into hot water for 3-5 seconds then hot peanut oil (300-350) for a few minutes and then i would crank the oil up to 450 to temper. the oil was in a long steel trough I made with a couple of turkey fryer burners under it for heat. Had good luck with that setup but cracking is always a possibility with water.
 
Well I decided to take the extra material from the katana and make a 20.5" machete and use it as a trial. I quenched it as described above. It went well, but i did not like the hamon. I thermal cycled it and redid it. I held it in the water for 4 seconds and got a small crack at the tip. It is not biggy. I can move the edge back about 3/16" and still be in the hard edge. I am just having trouble with the hamon now. It shows up great after etching but goes away when I polish it with Flitz.
 
I don't actively seek a hamon on most of my knives these days. I have used Admirals 1075/1080 in the past and received fairly nice hamons. What I did was to hand sand them up to 2000 then etch. On a few blades I sanded between etches and it seemed to help. Back when I used this steel, I quenched in ATF. I would use Parks 50 now. Just a few things to think about. Once that source of steel was gone, I stopped playing around with them and stopped buying steel from Admiral.
 
Mudbug007,
Should I also switch steel suppliers? Maybe New Jersey steel Baron? Do you have a source for Parks50?

Thanks
 
I get my Parks 50 and Parks AAA from Maxim Oil out of Fort Worth TX. (http://maximoil.com) You can buy it in 5 gallon buckets here.

As for steel suppliers, I use either Aldo at New Jersey Steel Baron or Chuck at Alpha Knife Supply. He carries some 1080+.

Just a note, all the knives I made from Admirals 1075/1080 were shorter type Utility and Hunting knives. Most had blades under 4 inches. They were not larger blades like you're talking about. Just FYI so you didn't think I was making swords and longer knives.
 
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