Cloudy hamon- without clay...?

I saw a Waki once forged from of those springs that had one of if not the most beautiful hamon Ive ever seen and I don't say that lightly.Of course a lot of that has to do with who polished it. Ive seen specs on those springs and they were appx 1055 carbon steel.
A C Richards said:
Though I did not polish it out like yours. I did a quench with a student who wanted to learn backyard methods. He teaches in South America and spends a lot of times in the bush so rudimentary tools are what he has available. I took a piece of railroad spring heated to temp in the forge and quenched it in old motor oil. The hamon that developed was gorgeous. It had wisps and a natural wave that was killer. I have not played with this since. I have a butt load of the spring and hope to play with it some more.

This just goes to show as Nick says, there is a lot to go along with this, type of steel, time, quench medium, heat, geometry and so forth. Hopefully I can duplicate it.

Great vid once again Nick and your hamons, well lets just say keep it up.
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Well I promised a pic of what I was doing with this. I actually sold the first blade without putting a handle on it at OKCA. I had to come home and do another for Seattle so here it is. Sorry about the pics. It is hard to capture the hamon and clouds.

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I ended up with some really cool looking zones in this blade. I can see where it hardened in a band then perlite mix then hard again. Very interesting. All done without clay or time and temp.
 
Nice, Chuck. Thanks for sharing this, Nick. I love using my salts for heat-treating and look forward to trying this technique.
Funny, I thought this whole time that you were milling the pattern into your blade leaving the spine and fingers really thick, doing the heat-treat and then grinding it down to a normal thickness. I actually tried it and it worked well, but swore I'd never do it again because it was a huge pain. Went back to clay.
 
I'm not sure if this will be of help to anyone, but I have found you can feel the change in quench through the tongs. I have not found a set time that works, but I can feel what I believe is the vapour envelope collapsing. At that point, I pull the steel out, 3-4 seconds, and back in to finish the quench. I have tried with brine first, then DT48, or only the DT48. There is a bit of difference, but I am not sure its the risk.
 
Michael Rader said:
Funny, I thought this whole time that you were milling the pattern into your blade leaving the spine and fingers really thick, doing the heat-treat and then grinding it down to a normal thickness. I actually tried it and it worked well, but swore I'd never do it again because it was a huge pain. Went back to clay.
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That is crazy! And insanely interesting. Did you happen to get any in-progress photos?
 
OK, old thread but very cool.

I am making a new blade from 1084. Would this work for my steel?

If so, who can I send it to to do this as I have no capabilites for HT at home, unless you're in the Dallas/North Texas/Texas area and want a project.

Larry
Tinkerer
 
So why do you lie about your clay use? Many people use clay. Its socially acceptable. It only turns into a problem when you drink your clay in large quantities while driving home from work and throw its container against your favorite rock en route.

Wait. Wrong thread?

Nice video, thanks for sharing!

Would it be possible to harden the blade and then just put a torch on the spine to temper it AND get some sort of hamon from this process?
 
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Tempering back the spine after full hardening will not result in the mixed martensite/pearlite blade that creates a hamon.
 
tinkerer.....1084 generally has too much manganese to develop an "active" hamon. You can definitely get a "quench line" with 1084, but I doubt you could get much activity. 1095 is a bit better, due to less Mn. 1075, W2, or W1 will be what you want for active hamons....clay or no clay.
 
The carbon carbides in 1095 decrease the vividness of the hamon, but it's still quite good. w2 has vanadium which takes up some of those carbides in vanadium carbides resulting in the spectacular hamon.

1084 gets a muddy line with a lot of effort. I have done much better with Aldo's 15n20.
 
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