All right! I can't take it anymore!

:thumbup: he he...I think its hammon:thumbup:
 
Hamon - Japanese for "way to make a blade with an ungodly amount of pearlite cost more than a proper, martensitic blade because it looks infinitely cooler."
 
thombrogan said:
Hamon - Japanese for "way to make a blade with an ungodly amount of pearlite cost more than a proper, martensitic blade because it looks infinitely cooler."
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Better put on your flame retardant suit, my man!! :D
 
I thought it was ham 'n like ham 'n cheese. Who knew

If I ever do it, I might call it a hampton:p

Or hormone, which reminds me of a joke. :yawn:

How do you make a hormone?
Don't pay 'er. :D
 
jdm61 said:
Better put on your flame retardant suit, my man!! :D
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I've been called retardant and flaming many times before. It's harder to do and it looks phreaking gorgeous; especially some stuff done by Caffrey, Cashen, Fikes, Fogg, Foster, Goo, Graham, Koster, and Lamey (amongst others - please don't feel slighted if I omitted or included you); but it doesn't increase performance. May as well braze a hardened steel edge onto a 14k gold blade (or gold/platinum/copper mokume) if a softer backing is an improvement.
 
Phillip Patton said:
I just looked over your site (not everywhere though), and couldn't find it.
Kinda seems like it was on the Steel Selection page, under W2.
Did you fix it, or was I wrong? If it was all in my head, I apologize. :o
I wasn't trying to put you on the spot.
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I got it already:D , there is no reason for apologizing for helping me out, letting something stay up there that I find incorrect would be less kind. Some time in the late Victorian period somebody started using tempering and hardening interchangebly and the field of heat treating has suffered ever since. Aside from all the folks who call heating to 1500F and plunging into oil "tempering" you have little misnomers like "temper-line" and even the science and industry guys giving us terms like "mar-tempering".

When websters defines temper as "To dilute, qualify, or soften by the addition or influence of something else : moderate", and it has its origins in Old egnlish or Latin before the 12th century, it is safe to say that the word has always had the proper meaning, and some lazy bonehead decided along the way to call all heat treating "tempering" and unfortunatly it stuck.

One can get a good grasp of things just by considering the term "to lose ones temper", which could arguably be said to mean one easily snaps under pressure, which would bring things back into focus really quick for blade makers.
 
As for "hamon", when Jimmy Chin was my student I was explaining the terminology of those lines to him and he shared a term with me in Chinese that I am still trying to pronounce properly to this day so I will not even try to spell it. I fell in love with the term because it got away from yet another thing Japanese being forced down the throat of every bladesmith on the planet, but mostly because of its literal meaning, which Jimmy carefully explained to me with a huge grin on his face. The word itself is a metaphor for an aspect of female anatomy:D What better way to describe a delicate attractive feature?:thumbup:
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
I got it already:D , there is no reason for apologizing for helping me out, letting something stay up there that I find incorrect would be less kind. Some time in the late Victorian period somebody started using tempering and hardening interchangebly and the field of heat treating has suffered ever since. Aside from all the folks who call heating to 1500F and plunging into oil "tempering" you have little misnomers like "temper-line" and even the science and industry guys giving us terms like "mar-tempering".

When websters defines temper as "To dilute, qualify, or soften by the addition or influence of something else : moderate", and it has its origins in Old egnlish or Latin before the 12th century, it is safe to say that the word has always had the proper meaning, and some lazy bonehead decided along the way to call all heat treating "tempering" and unfortunatly it stuck.

One can get a good grasp of things just by considering the term "to lose ones temper", which could arguably be said to mean one easily snaps under pressure, which would bring things back into focus really quick for blade makers.
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The apology was only if I was wrong. :D You changed it before I could double check, so I was worried. Still, I probably should have mentioned it off-forum...



As for "hamon", when Jimmy Chin was my student I was explaining the terminology of those lines to him and he shared a term with me in Chinese that I am still trying to pronounce properly to this day so I will not even try to spell it. I fell in love with the term because it got away from yet another thing Japanese being forced down the throat of every bladesmith on the planet, but mostly because of its literal meaning, which Jimmy carefully explained to me with a huge grin on his face. The word itself is a metaphor for an aspect of female anatomy:D What better way to describe a delicate attractive feature?:thumbup:
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I read about the meaning of the word on another makers site, but he didn't say what part of the anatomy it stood for. I won't ask. :D As long as I don't know, maybe I won't feel weird using it. :)
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
As for "hamon", when Jimmy Chin was my student I was explaining the terminology of those lines to him and he shared a term with me in Chinese that I am still trying to pronounce properly to this day so I will not even try to spell it. I fell in love with the term because it got away from yet another thing Japanese being forced down the throat of every bladesmith on the planet, but mostly because of its literal meaning, which Jimmy carefully explained to me with a huge grin on his face. The word itself is a metaphor for an aspect of female anatomy:D What better way to describe a delicate attractive feature?:thumbup:
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I retract my last statement, I think I like Kevin's term much better. If only he would spell it out so I can use it :D
 
NickWheeler said:
.....Call it a hardening line and most people will understand without looking at you like you're retarded. ;)
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:eek: Let's be politically correct here,,,,Mentally Challanged,,,,,kinda like IG :D

Last summer at Ashokan, Don Fogg was refering to it as ha-moon, I believe. :jerkit:
 
I made a 1050 Katana about 2 years ago and I have it hung up to show my friends who visit.
When they all come over they like to see the blade and I point out the "Hamon", but at that point we seem to always slide back into calling it the "temper line".

"Temper line" is just a way more normal sounding term. It sounds better to most people I know over the unknown "hamon"..
The only real problem I have when I use the term "Temper line", is that there really is no "line" as such on the sides of the blade.
It looks more like soft clouds.

Calling it "Temper line" will do in a conversation. "Hamon" is not really understood by anyone, so perhaps I could use a different term thats just as easy to grasp as "Temper line" but talks a bit more about the softness to the patterns.
 
Allan Molstad said:
I made a 1050 Katana about 2 years ago and I have it hung up to show my friends who visit.
When they all come over they like to see the blade and I point out the "Hamon", but at that point we seem to always slide back into calling it the "temper line".

"Temper line" is just a way more normal sounding term. It sounds better to most people I know over the unknown "hamon"..
The only real problem I have when I use the term "Temper line", is that there really is no "line" as such on the sides of the blade.
It looks more like soft clouds.

Calling it "Temper line" will do in a conversation. "Hamon" is not really understood by anyone, so perhaps I could use a different term thats just as easy to grasp as "Temper line" but talks a bit more about the softness to the patterns.
Click to expand...

Instead of "temper line" try "hardening line" or "quench line". Those are actually describing what's going on.
 
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