Is all 1075 "created equal" when it comes to hamon.

[Willie71]

That bottom clayless knife is cool! That hitatsura hamon is just begging for a vivid polish...

Yeah, I know. When I look at the pics, I have regrets. That was about 2years ago. I know a bit more now lol!. The white streaks are wax that I didn't wipe off well enough before shipping. The owner loves this knife. I'd have a hard time getting it back from him to fix it up. :grumpy: My hamon are better than my price point. No one would pay me what these blades are worth if properly polished as I have no name recognition.

 

[kuraki]

Any tips on reheat treating? I'm up in the air about redoing this knife given the amount of hand work I've already put into it but I'd like to know for the future. On a stock removal 1075, 1095, or W2 blade: just clay up and requench or do some normalizing and thermal cycles before quenching again? Outside of grain growth, etc. I'm just wondering if you can "reset" the hamon simply by requenching and tempering again.

 

[Willie71]

Any tips on reheat treating? I'm up in the air about redoing this knife given the amount of hand work I've already put into it but I'd like to know for the future. On a stock removal 1075, 1095, or W2 blade: just clay up and requench or do some normalizing and thermal cycles before quenching again? Outside of grain growth, etc. I'm just wondering if you can "reset" the hamon simply by requenching and tempering again.

Do you not like where the hamon is, or do you just want a hybrid polish? If just a hybrid, resand it, and polish. If you want a different hamon, re heat treating it usually results in grain size reduction, decreased hardenability, negative sori, unless water quenched, and the normal decarb. If the edge is thin, you will have to grind it back. If you deal with these minor issues, no problem with the final blade.

 

[kuraki]

Do you not like where the hamon is, or do you just want a hybrid polish? If just a hybrid, resand it, and polish. If you want a different hamon, re heat treating it usually results in grain size reduction, decreased hardenability, negative sori, unless water quenched, and the normal decarb. If the edge is thin, you will have to grind it back. If you deal with these minor issues, no problem with the final blade.

The latter. I am really happy with the pattern on one side and "meh" with the pattern on the other. But I'm likely just going to chalk it up to lesson learned: be more deliberate in how I place my clay.

 

[Willie71]

The latter. I am really happy with the pattern on one side and "meh" with the pattern on the other. But I'm likely just going to chalk it up to lesson learned: be more deliberate in how I place my clay.

It's a curse. :grumpy: Once bitten, there is no cure.

 

[kuraki]

Something new for me happened this weekend. I heat treated these knives. Below shows the clay.

I got to grinding last night, and the top one has -zero- hamon activity in it, the middle one just has a blob like a differential quench line, and the bottom one came out pretty close to the clay. No idea why. All three were normalized and heat cycled, quenched at 1475 in Parks 50, double tempered 2hrs at 400f. It's almost like the small one quenched so fast that it quenched completely.

While this big long 1095 scramaseax has probably the wildest hamon activity I've gotten to date. Hard to see in these pictures, it's just hand sanded to 150. But up close under the light you can see there's a lot going on.

So why did the first to blades fail? I don't understand. On a side note it's really hard to etch when your FC is 0F. My water buckets are of course frozen through, my parkerizing solution is even frozen through, the FC was just crusting at the top. But slooooow action hehe.