White steel #2 hamon polishing WIP

R

running bird

Joined
Sep 29, 2015
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Ive been working on making a blade from homogeneous white steel#2. The style of blade is loosely based on a traditional tanto, but will have more aspects of a hidden tang drop point. I forged this blade out during the spring and finally got around to grinding and doing the HT for it. With the help of some guys here in shop talk I was able to set up a good HT for white steel, and ended up getting very good results in the hamon.

This is the blade after polishing to 400grit, lightly etching in FC for 15sec, then brushing with a 3,000 grit sanding sponge: https://imgur.com/a/xBUOacB

The hamon came out very defined and with some nice detail of the clay’s original patter in the ji. I’m planning on bringing this blade to a much higher grit than I usually do to show every last bit of the hamon. From here I’ll work through 600grit, 800grit, 1,000grit, 2,000grir, and finally differentially polish the ha and ji with aluminum oxide and red iron oxide polishes. I’ll add onto this thread as I work forward to show the hamon’s progression.

Thanks for looking,
Kevin
 
That looks good. Hamon is a hair low for my tastes, but it doesn’t touch the edge, so it’ll work. I prefer lighter etches with Hitachi white than W2, as it looks overetched pretty easily in my experience.

What heat treat did you end up using in the end?
 
For the HT I held at 1475 for 10min, then quenched in parks50. And tempered 2x at 425.

The etch did come out very deep on this one, was not expecting it to eat away so fast. Guess I got too 1075 always needing a little extra in the etch. I only went with FC because It was the first etch, I usually go with warm distilled vinegar and dish soap for etching now. I mostly did this (relatively) heavy etch just to get a good idea of what detail was in the ji. I started loving the look you get in the hamon of the outline of where the clay was placed. To be honest if I didn’t see that detail I probably would have don’t the HT again until I got it. But in the end I think it turned out almost exactly how I was hoping it would. like the you said the hamon is a tiny big closer to the edge than I wanted, but it wasn’t bad enough to have to redo the HT.

I’m really excited to work on this, it’s been a project I’ve always wanted to do. And in the past year I’ve really started loving polishing hamons more and more. I used to be discouraged by spending hours sitting in the basement, but it’s gotten so much more exciting with every knife. I’d say it’s getting close to passing forging as my favorite part of working on knives.

I’m starting to plan out what I want to do with the handle and scabbard for the blade, I want to do something special for this one. My dad collects reclaimed wood from old barns around the north east that are torn down. He has a lot of wood that’s long gone/almost gone. Most of these barns were put up in the early to mid 1800’s. I’m thinking of trying to get some american chestnut stabalized, I’ve never been the best at doing handles for knives so I’d have to really practice first.
 
After cleaning up the initial etch , paint a 1/4" wide stripe of fingernail polish along the hamon and ji, leaving the ha-gane exposed. Then polish the ha-gane with either a fine powered abrasive paste or with Flitz/Simichrome. This will give a bright edge and a dark ji-gane.
 
Today I finished bringing the blade up to 800 grit, then I etched in FC for 10sec and brushed with a 3,000 grit sponge until the oxides were removed: https://imgur.com/a/9ekKxnP

Next I’ll be bringing the finish up to 1,200 grit, from there I’ll do my first cycle of polishing and very fine etching.

Stacy,
Should I do this at the lower grit paper or wait until I’m closer to my finally grit? I have a post on one of my older threads bookmarked where you explained in detail differential polishing, I’ve been fallowing that since. If I had it down right when I get to my final grit I polish the ha with red rouge and ji with aluminum oxide, keeping only the hamon with its etched look. Basically going for the ha to look bright and “solid” in finish. While the ji appears more dark and “grainy”. That’s at least how I enterprated it, correct me if I’m wrong.

Thank you for looking,
Kevin
 
That is a good system if doing a hybrid polish. Using a fine silicon carbide powder will give a white ha-gane. There are many different compounds and oxides that will give different results. You often will use one, and then use another until you get what you want. I like a darker ji and lighter ha, but do them the other way sometimes.

A lot depends on the steel and method of polishing.

Togi is a rabbit hole. Once you fall in, you rarely ever come back out. You end up with dozens of waterstones and jars/tins of abrasives. Your fingertips start to wear away ( and get small pieces sliced off). Your thumb is permanently red or black.
...... And you seem comfortable using words like shitagi, shinogi, and yokote in public.
 
I’ve finaly gotten to the last steps in polishing the hamon, and I’ve gotta say it’s coming out way better than I was expecting: https://imgur.com/a/SiKeJpB

After brining the blade up to 1,200grit I polished with mother’s mag until it had an almost perfect mirror finish. I then etched in my diluted FC for 5 seconds. After the etch I did about 25 passes on both faces with 1,200 grit paper, this left only the hamon standing out.

Next for the differential polish I moved back to polishing both faces with mother’s mag until the mirror polish was back, without polishing away the hamon’s etch. Then I applied a mixture of warm lemon juice and dish soap to only the Ha and hamon, letting it sit until I could see the oxides forming (repeated in the other side of the blade). Next I polished the ha with red rouge (red iron oxide) until it had a very faint white finish. I stopped polishing with the rouge when the steel was just about to completely lose its white shine.

I just have to clean up where the Ji and the hamon meet a little bit and I’ll have this hamon exactly where I want it. Im really excited with how this blade is coming along, and I think I’ve finally got my differential polish sorted out. I’ll be sure to post pictures again when I clean up the Ji, and I’ll continue this WIP with the handle and scabbard. I’ll be starting school again in a few weeks so there might be several weeks in between each update.

Thanks for looking,
Kevin
 
Hahaha thanks Stacy. That thread from a couple years ago really helped me get started on polishing hamons. I’ll add a link to it later for anyone who’s also looking to try it out.

Today I cleaned up the blade a little more, I think is the closest I’m going to get to perfect: https://imgur.com/a/erIk7jj

Now I’m going to start getting ready to make the shirasaya and guard. For this knife I’m going to use some America chestnut for the saya and wrought iron for the spacer/guard.

Kevin
 
The sheath is a saya, and a plain unfinished sheath/handle for storing the blade is shira-saya ( resting scabbard).

The handle is a tsuka, the guard is a tsuba, the spacer/collar is a fuchi, the but cap is a kashira.

The saya and above together are called the koshirae - (sword blade mountings).

It is wise to avoid woods with resins or acids is making a saya. Shira-saya should be a "white" wood. Ho (camellia) is the traditional Japanese wood, but alder and poplar make suitable shira-saya. Woods that are hard will scratch the blade, and should be avoided for that reason.

Here is a Walter Sorrells video that covers the very basics of making shira-saya. If you leave it running, you will see many more videos of interest. Grab a beer and a note pad and enjoy a couple hours of sword making porn.
 
I have an update on the polish of this blade. I have been working on improving my polishing skills, using this made as a test. I’ve been away at school and was only able to work on the blade a little bit every now and then, so I haven’t been able to update until now.

Since the last time I posted I wasn’t really happy with the finish on the blade. I felt like I shouldn’t have etched the blade at all because, surprisingly, a lot of very fine detail in the hamon was covered up. On top of that the contrast between the hardened and soft steel didn’t look quiet right when etched. So I took the blade back down in grit and worked my way up again.

This time I went back to 600 then from there worked up to 3,000. I made sure that every scratch from the previous grit was completely gone before moving up. Once I was at 3,000 grit I polished the entire blade with aluminum oxide polish until every mark from the sand paper was gone. Then after that polished the entire blade with my red iron oxide compound. At this point the blade looked like this: . This brought out a lot of the finer detail in the ashi that was previously missing.

Once I had I the detail I wanted brought up I focused on the shiage-togi again. This time removing my step of etching the hamon very lightly. I continued to polish the ha with the red oxide compound and the ji with the aluminum oxide compound. After touching it up little by little I’m finally satisfied with the finish.

I’m currently having a very hard time setting up proper lighting to get decent pictures of the blade, but I did the best I could with what I have. I found applying a small amount of oil to the blade helped with controlling the light on the blade. So I have two set of pictures for you all.

First without oil: https://imgur.com/a/8F8uDt0 . While the contrast is not showing up much in these pics, I tried my best to capture the detail in the ashi as mentioned before.

Second with a light film of oil: https://imgur.com/a/3iHpcv3 . With the lighting and camera I have available to me it’s very hard at this high of a finish to show the contrast between the ha and ji. But after oiling the blade for storage I noticed it was controlling the way the light was showing up on camera. To my eye it looks no different but the camera seems to be having a better time seeing it. While the finer detail is hidden by the film of oil I at least wanted to show what the contrast actually looks like by eye.

I’m a lot more satisfied with the finish the second time around, really glad I spent the time to get it done right.

Thank you all again for helping out,
Kevin
 
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