Whats happening to create a hamon?

Oh when I am ready to try with the W2 I have I will have temp controlled forge running and I will take it to as close to finished product as possible. Once it is HT'd the grinder won't touch it:D

This is one of the good things about these question threads, you learn things you didn't think of:thumbup:

But the grinder is so fun to play with:p
 
I'll be honest...many sword and knife makers do their hamon pieces on a grinder. They try and be as gentle as possible, and cool as often as needed. However, dipping a knife every pass on the grinder, and dipping a sword are two different animals. You are going to get the sword hotter.

The thick edge can be ground away on a grinder, as it is well below the hamon area ( hopefully).

What the togishi do is use water stones and lots of water. The rough grinding they do is on a huge slow turning wheel that is wet ( think 48" Tormek grinder). Once you learn to use the water stones, it is amazing how much metal you can remove in a very short time.
Easy.......NO!
Producing the best hamon.....YES!

If you use a grinder there are a few tips that will make the best outcome:
Use fresh belts. When it slows down, change it.
Use slow speed, and use light pressure.
Dip in water as often as possible.
Grind bare handed.
Once the basic shape is refined, switch to hand sanding.
Hand sand from 220 grit to 2500 at a minimum.
Read a bunch of tutorials on traditional sword polishing ( togi), and on hybrid sword polishing. Most peoples method will probably fall somewhere between the two.
When I get home ,tonight, I'll post a bunch of good links.
 
I've since got a 2x72" BEE Industrial knifemakers grinder, which is 2HP variable, so I can slow it down now which is nice. I'm still paranoid now after reading all these posts about overheating and ruining a hamon. This is definitely a pro that could have gone in my hand vs machine finish thread for hand sanding. Makes me want to build a pulley based wet-belt grinder now hehe :P

unky_gumbi said:
My grinder is a GIB with a VFD and when I am doing my clean up I have it slowed right down to about 25% so that would be in the range of 900 SFP
Click to expand...
 
In traditional sword finishing, they polish everything to a high degree by hand, then bring the areas in the edge down a bit to set it off more and bring out details. It is a lot of work but worth it.
 
http://www.arscives.com/bladesign/hybridpolish.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~steinrl/togishi.htm
http://www.nihonzashi.com/SharpenGuide.htm#Straightening the Blade
http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/shaping.html

Especially good comments from #3:

Power Tools

The worst thing you can possible do is using a belt sander, orbital sander, or grinder on your sword. That is the fastest possible way to turn that sword into junk. Power tools can quickly remove the temper or destroy the geometry of the blade. Orbital sanders destroy the geometry by rounding over the ha and shinogi. I use Delta and Makita wet grinders to reshape badly chipped blades, but they need allot of practice to use. The grinding wheels move slow and are water cooled so the blade does not heat up.

Abrasive Paper

Some people use progressively finer grits of silicon carbide sandpaper to sharpen swords. I have no problem with that, but I personally don't use that method. I'll keep my water stones and let others do their own thing. You can get silicon carbide and diamond lapping film that covers the same abrasive grit range as Japanese water stones.
 
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I have been waiting to get home so I could look at all these links, looks like I have a lot of reading and information to process, thanks everyone:thumbup:
 
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