Hamon Formulas with Parks #50

Karl, I am willing to teach a class in Japanese-style heat treating. You just need to find a venue and a time for me to do it.

David, I use plain water. Whatever comes from the tap. The place where I live the water is quite hard and that cost me some blades in the beginning. These days blades don't fail the water quench that often but they still do on ocassions. You can make a hamon in a blade without clay by adjusting the hardenability of the steel. The lower the hardenability the lower the hamon will be. In those cases the hamon line just follows the profile of the blade. Meaning, the steel will only harden to a certain level of thickness in the blade. I hope that makes it clear. This is especially true for tamahagane steel which is quite shallow hardening to begin with.

Keep practicing. Be willing to make some sacrifices. I mean in terms of blades not of any other kind ;). Eventually you will get it.
 
I think the best thing i ever heard was Burt Foster, he said (and I know I am not remembering exactly) don't try to make the hamon follow the clay perfectly, use the clay to influence the hamon.
 
I believe the entirely Sam. I just did a blade I was having problems with with no clay whatsoever and the hamon was a FREAK! I'm sure it was because it was too hot.
However, in the previous photo, the hamon followed the clay like I painted it on.
So, in essence, I've hit both ends of the spectrum.
I just want to find the middle of that road.
 
Sam Salvati said:
I think the best thing i ever heard was Burt Foster, he said (and I know I am not remembering exactly) don't try to make the hamon follow the clay perfectly, use the clay to influence the hamon.
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Sam, I believe Burt got that from Don Fogg.

Tai, there is much to what you say. Ya gotta get your mind right.
There is more to it, than just science ;)

The blades that I have thrown out would have been fine after any of the many quenches but I was looking for something specific, searching, learning and practicing.
The last dozen or so blades I've done have been 'one quench wonders' :D
 
David Wesner said:
Are you edge quenching only, to produce hamon without clay Karl ?
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No, full blade quench.
I'm beginning to think that I'm approaching this from 180 degrees off. If I think I want something to work, I'll just do the opposite.
I like that term, Don, "one quench wonders". I've certainly had a few that worked that way for me.
As well, Tai, it's refreshing to have you post your viewpoint on this. We all too often forget that we, as beings, are superior to this physical universe. Sometimes we must abide by its laws, but ultimately, WE are in charge of our own creations.
 
Hmmm. No clay, Full blade quench, and producing a wild looking hamon. I think I understand now. Thanks Karl :thumbup:
 
Watch a time-lapse video of radar where a cold front and a hot front hit each other and a thunderstorm results at the line. Thats how I always think about hamons. The cold is the quench, the hot is my clay. The thunderstorm is the hamon.
 
Steven Penner said:
That is really unclear for me. Could you explain further?
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Low hardenability means that the steel will only harden to a certain depth from the surface. So the thicker the blade the less likely is that it will harden. The second factor is how quickly the quenchant will extract heat from the blade. The faster the quenchant the higher the hamon line. If that does not clarify it then think about the geometry of the blade. The thinner part is the edge then it gets thicker towards the back. Hope that helps.

David Schott said:
Watch a time-lapse video of radar where a cold front and a hot front hit each other and a thunderstorm results at the line. Thats how I always think about hamons. The cold is the quench, the hot is my clay. The thunderstorm is the hamon.
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That's a great way to put it!

Here is a link to a blade I just finished:
tamahagane steel
 
David, that kind of makes sense to me now! Even without the clay, I got a wild hamon. It's sort of a big blade and I made the mistake of getting the blade too hot. As the spine held more heat, because of its mass and my mistake of too much heat, the quench got very little of the thinner cutting edge and created your "thunderstorm" where the two met.
Make sense?

"This can only happen in very shallow hardening steels (low manganese and little or no chromium)."
Is that my W1 Don? Done the same way, would W2 be different?
 
Thats why I always think of clay as simply a way to push heat around...too much clay and your heat at the spine bullies the cooling and doesn't allow the steel to cool fast enough...not enough and the cold front slips its way up too far.

Heres an example I always use where i used too puch clay and it bullied the hamon down too close to the edge. You can see where it wanted to go with the secondary hamon lines, but I think the mass of heat was just too much and leeched down below it. I am not an expert by any means, though....:
before.jpg

hamon3.jpg
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
"This can only happen in very shallow hardening steels (low manganese and little or no chromium)."
Is that my W1 Don? Done the same way, would W2 be different?
Click to expand...

Yes, W1 and W2 are the shallowest hardening but I do get more activity out of W2.

David, your thunderstorm description is a very good way to look at it :thumbup:
 
You can get all kinds of interesting hamon type activity without clay. Generally speaking, from my experience, if you just rapidly “plunge” the blade in to the quenching medium you don’t get much. However, if you “work” the quench, by modulating the rate and angle of emersion you’ll start to see some interesting effects. Some things you can try are slow emersion from the edge to the spine, hesitating part way through the quench and then continuing,… and rocking the angle of emersion. The temps, timing and blade geometry are also obvious factors. I saw some interesting examples on some kitchen knives a guy did a while back, forgot his name though. The way he did it was edge quenched about 2/3rds of the way up towards the spine, hesitated for a second or two, and then went the rest of the way in before the blade lost all it’s heat. I like it because it’s very intuitive and spontaneous. It all happens in just a few seconds. I've done quite a few but I’m still just scratching the surface with it.
 
Hey Karl, not sure if you saw this the last time I posted it (which was a while ago, I'm pretty sure), but here's the documents that went along with Burt's clay coat demo at Ashokan last year:

Burt's Clay Coat Docs

Hope this helps!
 
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