Sam Salvati mystery metal identification

[Atlas Knife Company]

Back at Ashokan, Sam Salvati gave me a piece of steel to forge. Thanks Sam! He said it was either 1080 or 5160. My understanding is that 1080 will produce a hamon and 5160 won't. I clay coated the spine with satanite when I did the HT. For all effective purposes they knife is finished. I haven't tried etching the blade since I figured there would be no point if it was 5160 and I wouldn't get a hamon. Should I go ahead and etch it and hope that it's 1080?

 

[Russ Andrews]

Either 5160 or 1080 can produce a quench line...neither will produce the frosty, highly active
transition we associate with a hamon.

1080 will etch darker than 5160. At this point, that may be your best indication of
which, of the two steels, you have.

 

[jll346]

Why not? Let's see some pictures when complete.

 

[Sam Salvati]

Do you have any left? If you have even a little cutoff, you could do testing on it.

 

[Atlas Knife Company]

Before and after etching. I can make out a little hamon, but not much. Perhaps I didn't use enough satanite?

 

[deker]

Before and after etching. I can make out a little hamon, but not much. Perhaps I didn't use enough satanite?

If you ever find yourself saying "maybe I didn't use enough clay" when quenching, you're already using too much. At last year's Fire & Brimstone Hammer-In, Jesus Hernandez schooled us all on traditional Japanese quenching and the associated science behind it. The short version is, if you have more than .100-128" thick clay you're not only not going to gain anything, but you begin to screw things up.

The Bowie looks pretty good though, hamon or not!

-d

 

[Atlas Knife Company]

The satanite coating that was applied was painted on, very thin, maybe 1/32". It doesn't really show in the picture, but it was very shiny in the top pic. I got a better hamon out of the putter.

Thanks for looking. I think we've determined that it's 1080.