Graham Clarke heat treatment services

L

Londinium Armoury

Joined
Jun 2, 2020
Messages
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Hey do any of you guys know Graham? I finally managed to find somebody who offers the exact services I require over here. I got off the phone yesterday with Graham and we arranged some minor details about my batches of knives and his hamon services. He's got decades of years experience in the metallurgy industry, has worked for the British armed forces developing tanks and rockets etc.
I'll be sending all of my future batches to Graham and he will be doing my Stainless knives for me as I can't do those. But he happens to be very experienced with 26C3 which I currently use, so I thought what the hell I can make a sword or 2 and send them off for hamon treatment with him as well.
I searched around on Bladeforums and his name is not mentioned here at all, so I thought i'd ask if any of you know or have worked with Graham in the past, or maybe even better do any of you have any blades he has worked on for you? as he's been doing this for awhile I figured some of the vets here might have ran into him.
Cheers.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
Bummer!
You could try Sword Forum International. IIRC, they have a lot of Brits.
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Oh I think I remember that one, and the sword buyers guide. I've read articles on both quite a few times, never signed up though. Location is starting to matter more to me, there are not many Brits on bladeforums % wise, but that never mattered to me, because I come here to learn, and as far as metallurgy and advice to makers that's universal. Sadly when ever I want specific services that big ocean suddenly becomes a problem.
It's much better now days though in terms of getting hold of American made steels and such, we even have a few outlets now stocking Alabama damascus, and through Alpha and GFS we now have access to at least a spinkle of PM steels.
We have always had access to European steels but it's nice to now be able to grab a few bars of premium USA made powder steels.
I was glad when I saw the Alabama damascus billets and blanks flood into the UK even if I don't personally use it, I was so tired of the imported eastern pattern welded junk flooding every shop here, to a point where all damascus was seen as junk.
I remember seeing Owen Bush and a few other local UK guys posting on a makers forum, can't remember which one it was now, i'd have to do some google searching to find their posts. I remember a regular from Bladeforums who does a lot of the US guys HT for them posted there too.
 
L Londinium Armoury ,
For a UK forum about knives, have you looked at Edge Matters? You will need to register (free) to access the site, no reading without registration. Even there though there are only a few mentions of their service and no reports from any experienced makers as to what their work is like.

I have been eyeing these folk to do heat treating too, but am unsure about the process they describe for stainless. I started a thread here to see what other folk thought of the process described. Still making up my mind.

Chris
 
C_Claycomb said:
L Londinium Armoury ,
For a UK forum about knives, have you looked at Edge Matters? You will need to register (free) to access the site, no reading without registration. Even there though there are only a few mentions of their service and no reports from any experienced makers as to what their work is like.

I have been eyeing these folk to do heat treating too, but am unsure about the process they describe for stainless. I started a thread here to see what other folk thought of the process described. Still making up my mind.

Chris
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Graham does use his own heat treatment methods, it's like combining oil and air plate quench together as far as I can understand, I spoke to him on the phone and I am going to be sending him my future blades. He has way more knowledge about metallurgy than me, I don't think he will be doing his strange methods if they didn't work. I mean if he was just some guy experimenting in his shed I would be skeptical, but Graham has worked on rockets and tanks for the British armed forces R&D departments. He has some good equipment, he dosn't use hobbyist ovens or bad equipment.
Go for it, I'm sending him a bunch of kitchen knives and a short sword.
He does his Hamons on Thursday so if you want hamon get them on his desk by wednesday for faster return. I think he does stainless batches every day.
He's a nice guy give him a call and ask him.
I haven't been on those forums, this is the only knife forum i'm an active member of, I will have a look and register though, thanks.
 
L Londinium Armoury ,
Thanks for the reply. Do post up how your blades turn out...steel, hardness, straightness, finish and how happy you are.

In the end I sent my small collection of AEB-L to a maker I got chatting to who has dialled in his process for that particular steel with foil, plates and cryo. He doesn't really offer HT service and I feel like I was very lucky that he was okay doing mine. I had had a few blades done by him already and was happy, and asked if he wanted to make some more money off me...if not I would send to Graham. Those blades will probably keep me busy for some while, but if I have others to do, particularly non-stainless, I will definitely be looking at Graham.

I tend to be more active here than on Edge Matters, and you can see by my post count / join date here "active" is a very relative term! That said, even though Edge Matters is smaller and less busy that the dearly departed British Blades forum, it is still good for finding out about locally sourced tools, materials and services. Also, being smaller, it is quite a sociable forum, if you want to get chatting with local knife enthusiasts.
 
C_Claycomb said:
L Londinium Armoury ,
Thanks for the reply. Do post up how your blades turn out...steel, hardness, straightness, finish and how happy you are.

In the end I sent my small collection of AEB-L to a maker I got chatting to who has dialled in his process for that particular steel with foil, plates and cryo. He doesn't really offer HT service and I feel like I was very lucky that he was okay doing mine. I had had a few blades done by him already and was happy, and asked if he wanted to make some more money off me...if not I would send to Graham. Those blades will probably keep me busy for some while, but if I have others to do, particularly non-stainless, I will definitely be looking at Graham.

I tend to be more active here than on Edge Matters, and you can see by my post count / join date here "active" is a very relative term! That said, even though Edge Matters is smaller and less busy that the dearly departed British Blades forum, it is still good for finding out about locally sourced tools, materials and services. Also, being smaller, it is quite a sociable forum, if you want to get chatting with local knife enthusiasts.
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Oh nice, we seem to not have many custom knife HT services over here as far as I can see. I have been keeping an eye out for around 4 years now. While having to become a backyard scientist and mess around with my own home brew forges. Which probably cost me thousands in experiments.
I was even ruining the best professional blowtorches, because of how many blades I was heat treating per week. A Rothernberger Super Fire 2 torch would last me 4 weeks before it literally fell apart. Once I started murdering torches on a regular basis I said rthis needs to change, i'm wasting cash. For the price of a new Rothy (around £90) I could send off 10 knives for HT.
I was planning to buy a professional grade HT oven, but I didn't have enough cash for a real one, and I didn't want to buy a paragon or an Evenheat hobbyist oven and waste more money on crappy equipment. But I don't have 10k to lay down on a professional grade oven.
This is the only viable option I can see now. Sending my blades out for HT, I should have started doing it years ago.
I will let you guys know how it goes, I've been busy with my second business lately, once I send this short sword off for HT I'll post pictures of the hamon he did and let you know t's quality. It's taken me over 3 weeks to hand file this thing, I've got it 95% ground now.
https://imgur.com/a/S4fayHX
 
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When I wanted a forge for heat treating, I bought a Shorty Burner from Rex Price Of Hybrid Burners. Makes even the best plumber’s torch look flimsy, and it’s the second smallest he makes. Cost less than two of the torches you cooked.😬

Regarding Paragon and Evenheat being “crappy” hobby equipment too contemptible to waste money on, I think you might benefit from revising that assessment. There are plenty of makers, full and part time that get excellent results with those ovens and make money off their back. In fact, all those AEB-L blades I have had done were treated in a Paragon, and I have had five or six O1 blades done by a friend with an Evenheat, he made it to competed at the Atlanta Blade Sport championship with one of his O1choppers and he does some contract work with the oven.

If you have been saving for 4 years and still cannot afford the kiln you want, but have spent thousands and countless hours on experiments with gas torches, it sounds like you should have bought a Paragon 3-4 years ago. Even if you send things out most of the time, a ”cheap” oven would help you baseline a treatment so you could better assess the commercial work, and you would be able to turn around one-offs and experiment with new steels.

The worst enemy of good enough is perfect. ;)

looking forward to seeing the finished result on that long blade.

chris
 
C_Claycomb said:
The worst enemy of good enough is perfect. ;)
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This is one of my favorite sayings...
"Don't let perfect be the enemy of good" is the way I say it.

By all means strive for perfection, but don't let your idea of perfect stop you from trying, or from finishing your project.

Learn from mistakes and drive on, make the next one better!
 
C_Claycomb said:
When I wanted a forge for heat treating, I bought a Shorty Burner from Rex Price Of Hybrid Burners. Makes even the best plumber’s torch look flimsy, and it’s the second smallest he makes. Cost less than two of the torches you cooked.😬

Regarding Paragon and Evenheat being “crappy” hobby equipment too contemptible to waste money on, I think you might benefit from revising that assessment. There are plenty of makers, full and part time that get excellent results with those ovens and make money off their back. In fact, all those AEB-L blades I have had done were treated in a Paragon, and I have had five or six O1 blades done by a friend with an Evenheat, he made it to competed at the Atlanta Blade Sport championship with one of his O1choppers and he does some contract work with the oven.

If you have been saving for 4 years and still cannot afford the kiln you want, but have spent thousands and countless hours on experiments with gas torches, it sounds like you should have bought a Paragon 3-4 years ago. Even if you send things out most of the time, a ”cheap” oven would help you baseline a treatment so you could better assess the commercial work, and you would be able to turn around one-offs and experiment with new steels.

The worst enemy of good enough is perfect. ;)

looking forward to seeing the finished result on that long blade.

chris
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I think when you quoted my words I sounded a bit harsh bordering assholey, I don't mean to offend or insult anybody who uses them, or the quality of their HT, I was just advised in the past by a few different professionals to avoid buying hobbyist equipment like the evenheat, as it's not made or used by industry professionals. So I never bought one of those ovens due to being advised against it years ago for professional use.
I've been eying up some professional ovens ( I was never considering a small oven as I planned to do swords as well eventually) but they all cost upwards of 10-20k and go much higher for full size professional industry ovens.
I don't really have my own opinion about paragons or evenheats, I've never owned either, so I am going off second hand advice anyway.
 
An EvenHeat or Paragon will heat treat steel just fine.
 
Hello L Londinium Armoury ,
Deciphering tone is hard on the internet. I am sorry if I spun your words further than your meaning when I quoted you. I have been dipping into threads working back page by page, and saw a thread where people discussed professional HT equipment. Natlek in particular has been critical of "hobby" ovens, but that is far from a general consensus.

What you said has had me thinking since I replied last night. The related questions of "What is good enough?" and "How much can I afford?", and the choice of whether to buy something today, or save for something "better" tomorrow.

There is nuance in the advice of "buy once cry once" and buy the best you can afford. If it takes you a year to save £800 to put towards a grinder, it makes more sense to buy a 2-wheel or entry level tool-arm grinder and single speed/pulley motor, than to confine yourself to files and sandpaper for four years until you can afford a variable speed Wuertz grinder and trimmings.

There are all sorts of false economies. Everyone knows about buying multiple cheap tools, breaking them, then buying slightly better, breaking those, then eventually buying the premium band and living happily ever-after. However, buying Festool because you have a what might be a passing interest in DIY/home improvement wood working, or delaying learning a skill because you cannot afford the kit you lust after doesn't make much economic sense and I doubt the experienced folk would advise either course if it were put that way.

Maybe there is an unspoken idea of time? Don't run out and buy a Grizzly/Sieg mill if you can wait 8 months and get a Bridgeport? but....if a Bridgeport is never going to be on the cards, maybe just buy a tool that give you some more capability than you had?

Of course, then there are people like John Grimsmo who converted a dinky bench top mill to CNC (which the experts advise isn't a particularly capable system), but he used it to spring board to a Tormach, (which is also viewed as "hobby"), but he used that to build a business which now sports a Mori and a Kern.

ATB

Chris
 
C_Claycomb said:
Hello L Londinium Armoury ,
Deciphering tone is hard on the internet. I am sorry if I spun your words further than your meaning when I quoted you. I have been dipping into threads working back page by page, and saw a thread where people discussed professional HT equipment. Natlek in particular has been critical of "hobby" ovens, but that is far from a general consensus.

What you said has had me thinking since I replied last night. The related questions of "What is good enough?" and "How much can I afford?", and the choice of whether to buy something today, or save for something "better" tomorrow.

There is nuance in the advice of "buy once cry once" and buy the best you can afford. If it takes you a year to save £800 to put towards a grinder, it makes more sense to buy a 2-wheel or entry level tool-arm grinder and single speed/pulley motor, than to confine yourself to files and sandpaper for four years until you can afford a variable speed Wuertz grinder and trimmings.

There are all sorts of false economies. Everyone knows about buying multiple cheap tools, breaking them, then buying slightly better, breaking those, then eventually buying the premium band and living happily ever-after. However, buying Festool because you have a what might be a passing interest in DIY/home improvement wood working, or delaying learning a skill because you cannot afford the kit you lust after doesn't make much economic sense and I doubt the experienced folk would advise either course if it were put that way.

Maybe there is an unspoken idea of time? Don't run out and buy a Grizzly/Sieg mill if you can wait 8 months and get a Bridgeport? but....if a Bridgeport is never going to be on the cards, maybe just buy a tool that give you some more capability than you had?

Of course, then there are people like John Grimsmo who converted a dinky bench top mill to CNC (which the experts advise isn't a particularly capable system), but he used it to spring board to a Tormach, (which is also viewed as "hobby"), but he used that to build a business which now sports a Mori and a Kern.

ATB

Chris
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Both philosophies have benefit and merit. I support and applied both to myself. When I first started making blades I literally had no modern equipment at all and to this day I use very limited amount of power tools. Using mainly traditional Japanese knife making techniques. I learned to temper blades on a coal fire using a mixture of soft and hardwood coals and home made coke made from anthracite nugs. I used Yaki Modoshi tempering, and differenrtial hardening yaki ire with home made clay.
Started with less than £25.00 worth of equipment, I was using an old Woden engineers vice back plate as an anvil, and a construction girder for the longer swords. All I had was an angle grinder and a benchtop sander that I flipped upside down and clamped to a workbench.
Holding O1 and 1095 for 10 min soak time all by eye and colour change in the evening light, after 4 years practice I could do that, and I'm glad I learned those skills.
Now though I have gone passed the stage of getting pleasure from the process, it's just become work. All I want now is to make a blade as fast as possible, with the least amount of effort, and having HT done for me professionally and getting a HRC certificate for my customer is nice.
I sometimes miss quenching a red blade in the evening, it's been about 2 months now since I quenched a blade. I will probably quench 1-2 myself each year just for nostalgia. Like lighting a bonfire on Novemberr 5th kind of thing.
 
Londinium Armoury said:
Both philosophies have benefit and merit. I support and applied both to myself. When I first started making blades I literally had no modern equipment at all and to this day I use very limited amount of power tools. Using mainly traditional Japanese knife making techniques. I learned to temper blades on a coal fire using a mixture of soft and hardwood coals and home made coke made from anthracite nugs. I used Yaki Modoshi tempering, and differenrtial hardening yaki ire with home made clay.
Started with less than £25.00 worth of equipment, I was using an old Woden engineers vice back plate as an anvil, and a construction girder for the longer swords. All I had was an angle grinder and a benchtop sander that I flipped upside down and clamped to a workbench.
Holding O1 and 1095 for 10 min soak time all by eye and colour change in the evening light, after 4 years practice I could do that, and I'm glad I learned those skills.
Now though I have gone passed the stage of getting pleasure from the process, it's just become work. All I want now is to make a blade as fast as possible, with the least amount of effort, and having HT done for me professionally and getting a HRC certificate for my customer is nice.
I sometimes miss quenching a red blade in the evening, it's been about 2 months now since I quenched a blade. I will probably quench 1-2 myself each year just for nostalgia. Like lighting a bonfire on Novemberr 5th kind of thing.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Guy Fawkes day. Bet ya didn't think a cowboy would know that did ya? I remember watching the fireworks from the West Sands in St Andrews. Cool display as I remember it but that would of been 1972 so maybe I'm not remembering it right, don't know.

I've been outsourcing HT for many years now and it has really worked for me and my operation.
 
Horsewright said:
Yeah, Guy Fawkes day. Bet ya didn't think a cowboy would know that did ya? I remember watching the fireworks from the West Sands in St Andrews. Cool display as I remember it but that would of been 1972 so maybe I'm not remembering it right, don't know.

I've been outsourcing HT for many years now and it has really worked for me and my operation.
Click to expand...

We have a great display most years here in London, I'm only a 20 min drive from the River Thames in the East End of London, it's usually a good show.
 
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