My Hamon keeps shifting

JTknives

JTknives

Joined
Jun 11, 2006
Messages
8,651
I have done 3 hamons 3 diffrent blades made from w2 and each time the hamon shifts quite a bit tword the edge, by about around .24". i have tryied my supper fast oil twice and then tonight i tryied warm water with the same results. I soak the blade at 1450 for 10 min then right into the quench. I have been wondering if my clay is to thick and it is holding the heat to long and not alowing the hamon to rise up to te clay. any ideas? thanks
 
JT,
When you figure out how to determine where the hamon will fall to a fine amount, please let the world know.....they have been searching for that answer for over 1000 years and have not come up with it yet.

The thickness of the clay plays a big part of the story. Just a tiny bit of manganese in the steel can change things,too. The biggest thing is the in-out time in the interrupted quench. Playing with that will move the hamon up and down a lot.

What most folks do is learn where to expect the hamon to fall, and place the clay accordingly. There is always a mystery to getting a hamon...and what it will look like. The more you do them the easier it gets, but you will never control it totally.
Stacy
 
Depending on how much Mn that particular W2 has, 1450 may
not be hot enough.
I have one W2 with .20 Mn, which will not harden well from
soaking in a furnace at 1485f, but will harden well from a
forge where I can be certain that decalescencs has progressed
to my satisfaction.
 
Burt Foster gave great advice on making hamon, he said something along the lines of you are not using the clay to make the hamon exactly, but influencing where it will form.

Easy answer here is, if it is shifting .25 where you don't want it to go, back your clay up .25
 
well i'm using the rutland furnace cement. i put on around an 1/8" maybe just a touch more. and then i slowlwy heat it up to drive off the water. but the clay puffs up and is still very hard but it gets a lot thicker. i have heard that W2 hamons where landing right around the clay line so that iswhy i what putting the clay so low. what happens is that i clay half the blade and then it shifts and gets close to the edge. let me post a picture of my last oil quench hamon so you can see what i'm dealing with.
 
You don't need that much clay, imo. I like satanite because you can thin it down with water and make it go on thinner. I don't know if you can do this with the rutland cement.
 
AcridSaint said:
You don't need that much clay, imo. I like satanite because you can thin it down with water and make it go on thinner. I don't know if you can do this with the rutland cement.
Click to expand...

ya you can thin it down. what thickness should i shoot for
 
With satanite I try to go with somewhere around the thickness of a quarter. Your cement may be different, but it's a place to start.
 
AcridSaint said:
With satanite I try to go with somewhere around the thickness of a quarter. Your cement may be different, but it's a place to start.
Click to expand...

ya i'm way thicker then that. and that is wast i started thinking was that it was holding in the heat for way to long.
 
yep that was my problem. i just did a sample disk with much thinner clay, about 3/32" to 1/8" and let it dry in the sun. then heated it with the torch and quenched in water. the hamon fallows the clay just how it should. so now to redo my last blade and see how that does.
 
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