Hamon/honyaki troubleshooting

V

Vasco Veríssimo

Joined
Jun 3, 2020
Messages
2
Hello everyone

So I've spent the day experimenting with honyaki and i got some... awkward results.
Anyway, this was my first run:
Pic #1, Pic #2

It was successful as far as the hamon is concerned. Further polishing and etching revealed some very nice wisps (didn't take a pic), but i had to scrap it because of a nasty crack.
So I tried again, applying the clay in the same fashion (a bit thinner). I wasn't happy with the first quench (my mistake, I didn't grind enough to go through the decarb and test etch seemed poor). Second quench went great, except there were some spots below the clay line that hadn't hardened. Third quench went well too (0 warpage so far) but the spots had now become a large area.
Pic #3

Unfortunately, this is the only pic I have of the second blade.

After thinking about this for a bit I deduced that either
a) there's no carbon left in that area (idk if that's even possible, but I thought that due to the unhardened area spreading from quench #2 to #3)
b) has something to do with the cooling (I'm quenching in a cylinder with ~10cm diameter that might be causing trouble with even cooling)
c) hamon mysteries

Any thoughts?

Thanks for reading my first post here on bladeforums!
Vasco

EDIT: I'm having a hard time with the photos
 
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Each time you harden without normalizing, you refine the grain more, and decrease hardenability, requiring faster and faster quenches. Try 10 min a 1650f, two grain refinement cycles at 1450f, then apply Clay, and heat treat.
 
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