W2 hamon,Color contrast?

B

blzwow

Joined
Nov 26, 2016
Messages
53
I was wondering if some of you would explain something about hamons. I've noticed that on most finished knives the edge below the hamon line is brighter than the spine side. However, on some knives the edge side is dark while the spine side is bright? What is the difference?
I heard that it is caused by using different quenching materials. If quenching with water, the edge will be darker. If quenching with oil, the color of the edge will be lighter than the spine.
Thanks for input.
X8GYcfD
web2wxgetmsgimg.jpg

webwxgetm3sgimg.jpg
webwxgetmsgigmg.jpg
4sf29Mf
 
It depends on which side you polish. The hardened steel is going to etch darker. If you polish it more though, it will look lighter.
Some blades aren’t hamon, but San mai, where one type of steel is sandwiched between two other steels and when etched they will contrast each other.
The quenching medium won’t have anything to do with the color.
I’m not entirely sure, but the blade you showed with the stag may be San mai, I could be mistaken though.
 
It depends how you etch it and polish it. I’ve done many Hamons and many different etching/polishing procedures. The darker the hamon on either side just means more oxides were left on either side. The top picture just has more oxides left on the blade which depending on how you clean the oxides off, it sometimes is harder to remove the oxides off the soft part of blade then the hardened part. Leaving the top darker and more pronounced. The bottom two have just about all the oxides removed making the hamon more white then black. Looking at the bottom stag Bowie it seems to be just the picture and lighting. I have seen that exact knife before in many other pictures and the cutting edge and hamon line is not darker then the soft spine. The edge is polished to a bright silver, It’s just the way the light was when taking that exact picture. The picture shows a black line for the hamon when other pictures I’ve seen on Instagram of that knife show a pure white polished hamon line.

I’ve polished my hamons using silicon carbide powder and it removes 100% of oxides and leaves the steel bright silver on both sides with a wispy white hamon but when I’ve tried taking pictures of that knife. If I take 5 different angles then some are silver while some cutting edges are as black as can be, even though the whole knife is completely clean of any oxide and silver in person. It’s very hard to take pictures of hamons and have the colors exactly the same as how they look in real life
 
Last edited:
It could also be a lighting thing...they change as they play in the light. At one angle the ashi lines can look almost black and change the angle and they turn wispy white.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top