How do i get a good hamon on my 26C3 steel

mihaelx said:
update: i got new 2.2 mm 26C3 from GSF shop, along with satanite, i also managed to snatch ferric chloride from some dude in my country thru local marketplace, i hope it will be good then
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You can make ferric chloride from hydrochloric (aka muriatic) acid and steel wool. Mix the two in a container outside, adding the acid to some steel wool and water. We don't need particularly high purity for what we're doing.
Play around with different dilute acids you can get; lemon juice, white vinegar, instant coffee have all been used
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
Really? Well, I may have to give them a call. - Thanks Josh.

I checked it out. Good to know that they have some. It is in forging thicknesses, but that is good, not bad. They do have an error in their info. Blue (ao) paper steel is aogami, ao-ko, ao-ichi-ko (Blue # 1)). Blue #2 is ao-ni-ko. White (shiro) paper steel is shirogami, shiro-ko, shiro-ichi-ko (white # 1). Their site calls all three ao-ko, ao-ichi-ko.
I will contact them for spec sheets and point out the misprint.
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It is nice to have this available in north america, it is pricey but can be worth it. Aogami 1 is a very good steel for many different uses, varying the heat treatment a little makes for very decent toughness for harder use blades, whereas by nature it lends itself easily to very hard and long lasting edges, plus the 3/8 thickness is fun for integral knives or simply very thick billets for forge welding. Been using it for a year and love it so far. If you love wolfram special you will love aogami 1.
 
One last question, before i heat treat it, i will leave it 1mm thick at the edge, now, if i carefully watch out during post heat treat grinding (diping in water every pass or so), the hamon should not be effected yes?
 
The hamon won't be affected even if you over heat it, accidentally. But to answer your question, no it will not be affected.
 
The blade bended, and when i tried to straighten it, it cracked.
However, i think i messed up way before that.
So, ive waited 16 hours for satanite to dry, then i put it in oven for 1h at 100C.
During the heat up to non magnetic, my air blower broke down, it was unevenly hot and well i was forced to take it out and retry when i fixed the blower.
Anyway i fix, go at it again, get even heat and quench in brine. NO cracks, perfect.
(It was 1mm thick at the egde). However when i was moving it up and down in there, i didnt realize i was at a angle, which probs made the bend horrible. Tried to make i straight and splits right in two at the heel.
After that i handsanded it to 1000 and etched.
(Multiple pics)
https://imgur.com/a/WaJxVkd

As you can see, the hamon has some texture, dont know what that is. I held it in ferric for like 5 seconds, and its already black as hell. (Is my ferric too strong? Should i dilute it?) Did i put satanite unevenly to cause this??
 
The pattern could have been from the FeCl. how well did you clean the blade before etching?
 
The issues:
Brine quench - 26C3 isn't a water quench steel, use Parks #50 or other fast oil.
No temper - trying to straighten a water quench blade before tempering is almost certain to snap it like glass.

As for the pattern, you had it hot in the forge for a long time. Decarb is probably deep. You need to sand it completely past the decarb to clean steel to see the actual hamon. The FC for a hamon should be fairly weak. 5 parts water to one part FC stock solution (42° Baume)is the most concentrated you want. You can go as weak as 10:1 or even 15:1 for some really detailed hamons.
 
That would be the stock solution. You need to dilute it 3:1 for most etching and 5:1 or weaker for hamons.
 
A question more on the design, but how much hardened space should be allowed for different things? For a kitchen knife i figure there needs to be a fair bit, since you want something that can be sharpened a bunch. but for less practical knives does it matter too much? I remember seeing some katana with very thin hardened areas.
I'm doing this as a test out of that W2 i mentioned earlier, and the hardened part is fairly thin. It's art, and in that it has an intended use it's stabbing people so it's not something that's going to be sharpened a lot. also it's a lot thicker than i'm used to working in, which affected the hamon i got here
Not fully polished here, still some decarb to remove. this was just checking the hamon
94df671f740729be.jpg
 
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