Hamon success, 1 brick forge failure

[Atlas Knife Company]

Trying to get ready to HT my Ashokan 2010 knife. Practicing a lot of HT in my 1 brick forge. Seems I can get the middle heated properly, but not the tip. I think I need a longer forge. However, it does seem to have a very nice hamon on one side of the blade. The entire blade had a thin coat of satanite. I did a straight line coat of satanite on one side(bottom) and wavy on the other(top). I kept the blade moving around inside the forge and with the lights off I could see that the whole blade was orange. However, the tip wasn't quite as bright as the middle where the hamon is. I was worried about burning the edge as it took about 10 minutes to get the blade non-magnetic.

This practice blade is 1080, the Ashokan knife is 5160. They should HT about the same, shouldn't they?

What can I do to improve the efficiency of the 1BF? Should I have the blade resting on something to keep it off the brick or just have it laying on the brick? The opening is 1" × 2" from end to end. It seems that an even amount of heat is coming out of both ends.

SAM! Beef Jerky is a winter project normally, but I'll be making some for the race next month. What kind do you want?

 

[Patrickknives]

I am guessing that the issue is more with the heat source than the 1BF. I had sucess using more than one brick and putting a barrier between the flame and the blade. This way the heat was more dispersed into the the area of the forge and not just against the blade. I also used bricks outside to control the heat loss by covering part of the opening, if the openings are too big your heat is just blowing through.

I did find that you need to adjust where the tip of the torch is to get the most heat, too far in and no oxygen, too far out and heat not going into forge.

 

[Deweyknives]

5160 is not a good hamon steel.........

[...in case you're practicing for a hamon]