Hamon a nice Birthday

Find deals on amazon
Miura knives
Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
WillC

WillC

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2011
Messages
2,142
Reaction score
2
:pirate1:

Hamon birthday to me, hamon birthday to me......

Ha ha , well I've reached the light to medium roasted age of 39 today !

So I thought I would treat my self to working some of the super clean carbon steel from Achim.

And what better way than a fully forged little test piece number and a crack at a Hamon. No real excuses not to get one with this steel, so fingers crossed.....:D

Nice thick chunk of SC125, perfect for forging down...


















After a descale and second forging followed by heat cycles, blade is not ground at all prior to HT, just scale removed here for clay coating...










Will be going in water as intended, no alloy what so ever in this steel, just carbon and iron.

Wish me luck :eek2:
 
Cool. What is with that burning cloud in your second photo? Some kind of heat blanket?
 
Thanks everybody:)

Yes the glowing cloud is fire blanket acting as a furnace door, nothing metaphysical don't worry ;)

Well I was Hamon a Jammin time until this happened!



I thought I heard a few gentle tinks after the first quench during the interruption part.

And I infact had several on the edge. Simple case of overheating, I overestimated the amount of heat lost from furnace to quench considering the heat held by the clay, by quite a few degrees, I think the window to get this steel right and of optimal grain is only a few degrees up or down, so next time I will use the lower end of the temperature window.


But Im sticking with water I think, the differential hardness achieved was very successful and we have hamon, can see it so clearly even on a forged surface. The blade has 3 clearly defines areas, spine, very soft, less than 40hrc, middle portion around the 60's, edge 67hrc.

Here are the pics, I broke the piece to see the grain, its fine but could be finer, so again to the overheating....

Most interesting thing is the break, the edge breaks clean, the middle bends the breaks, the spine just bends, perfect on the differential bit anyway!!













Ah well lots learned, off to the Pub :)
 
Happy Birthday Will!

Looking forward to more pics. :knife:
 
Epic. Happy birthday and be sure to take a ton of pics. Ive never seen a honyaki knife forged from scratch. Im super excited.
 
Sometimes blood is thicker than... the ketchup. ;)
Anyway, Happy Birthday!
 
Tiny tiny test piece, its a dinky utility only 25mm BL! Just wanted to go though the motions before breaking another!

This is the SC125, I now have the data for the steel, was not expecting manganese, but its there and it works, overall I would say this steel is amazing spec, something like a much cleaner version of White 1 would be closest, closer than white 2....with enough manganese to get perfect results with a fast oil, something I will try later, for now enjoying a low temp interrupted water/oil quench, and lots to play with there with the steel thicknesses/clay or not and time of the interruption.....

C = 1,23 %
P <= 0,01
S <= 0,0075
Si <= 0,075
Mn = 0,56 %

Impressive spec indeed, the grain is very very fine on pieces I've broken, it forges beautifully as well, buttery compared to something alloyed.
Looking forward to trying it towards full hardness on a full scale knife. I tempered this one down from 67hrc to about 63 for general utility duties, will see what its made off at 65/66hrc on a super thin edge next.

 
Although I know next to nothing about steel composition, your constant testing and experimentation with alternatives is fascinating, and very commendable.

Looking forward to updates!

Cheers

J
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top