Some Hunters with Hamons

Brian Avila

Brian Avila

Joined
Jan 2, 2011
Messages
1,286
Here are two of the knives that I finished this weekend.

I have two that are exactly the same design because I was working on trying to get my hamons more controlled. I was having problems with blobby hamons so my buddy Ed Braun helped me out and showed me some clay up and gave me some thoughts to think over. Both have awesome distal taper from the ricasso to the tip. Thinly ground and feathered edges.

The first one is my heat treat. 5/32" thick, thermal cycled many times, Stabilized Checken Burl from Gerst Hardwoods.

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The second one was done (Cut, Profiled, Ground, Polished, and handled) by me but heat treated by Ed Braun and has some of his signature "dots" in it. 5/32" thick, heat treated by Ed Braun, Stabilized Yellow Box Burl from Gerst Hardwoods. I like it and it has some extra stuff in the hamon.

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Nice looking hunters, clean and well thought out. Your hamons are off to a nice start, honestly I like the first one you did more than the second.
If you are interested in hamons check out the ABS forum, in their "topic of the month" forum there was a discussion on hamons a while back, some very skilled people gave insight into how they do it. It's worth checking out.
 
Justin - thanks. I agree with you I like the first one more than the second one. The second pictured knife was heat treated first by my friend, at full thickness ( no bevels ). It was done first so I could see what he did with clay and thicknesses and then I ground it and looked at the results and then I based the first pictured knife off of that. I just handled and finished them together.

But there are a lot of different types of hamons and I am not up to par on the terminology but my friend likes the straight type with some wispy ashi, I like the really active style. He can do both though. This was just the outcome of our experiment.

It was a learning experience. Geometry, temp, and time are really important as you can see from the differences because the clay layout was similar. I have been tracking info down on hamons for as long as I can remember, Wheeler, Hanson, Lemay, Barrett and others and their hamons and processes. I am now just getting to the point where I actually like my results.
 
Very nice package. As we do our Hamons, maybe we should post a picture with the clay coated blade and one of same knife after polish, just saying.
 
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