Hamon with slow oil and NO clay?

[PIndelicato]

Curious to know if anyone has experimented with creating clayless hamon with slow quench oils. I ask because the first few I had were unintentional/auto hamon when some 1080 blades were quenched in hydraulic fluid...I always assumed that it was too slow to fully harden the blades which resulted in the unexpected results.

This sent me down the path of Park 50 quench oil and clay, but it never resulted in the same amount of wispy, cloudy activity that I originally had by accident in the hydraulic oil. I guess this would be analogous to clayless hamon in a fast oil, but approaching it from the other direction.

Any thoughts or experiences with this?

 

[PIndelicato]

Here is the same steel, clayed and quenched in Park 50...clearly more controlled, by far less activity.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

The first blade looks more like unremoved decarb than a hamon.