Hamon on Honyaki-material

[glestain]

I saw some honyaki hamon is "obvious /clear", but some don't. Is this because of the type of material or else? May because of heat treatment?
So far I don't see any honyaki made from other material besides blue and white, is this because of tradition?

 

[mkriggen]

I'm sure more knowledgeable people will chime in with better info, but my understanding is that many different things effect the appearance of the hamon line. In particular, type of steel, heat treatment, and finishing technique.

Be well,
Mikey

 

[Pensacola Tiger]

As I understand it, revealing the hamon line is a matter of enhancing the contrast between the harder and softer steel, in a way similar to how a kasumi finish is obtained - either etching or polishing with the proper stones. Of course that assumes a clean demarcation between the harder and softer areas.

 

[sachem allison]

cris anderson uses W1 and W2 not blue and white and I have seen some beautiful Hamons on L6 and 1095

 

[chinacats]

Singatirin uses V2 for their mizu-honyaki...I've always heard that white paper steel produces the best hamons.

 

[pkjames]

you can get a clear hamon easily from white steel but not so easy from blue steel, and probably not at all from blue 1. I forgot the exact reason so please correct me if I am wrong. It seems to do with the heat treatment range limitation, that if the HT temp. range is small, it's less likely to get a hamon because of the differential heat treatment temp isn't that much therefore the less pronounced diff HT line (hamon). Blue 1 has HT temp range about 10 celsius, white 2 has a much wider range.

I don't know about v2, but could be partly due to this reason (apart from polishing)

 

[JBroida]

i just had a talk with some craftsmen about this the other day... i brought up blue steel having less of a nice looking hamon due to the chromium content. However, their experience is more in alignment with HT being first and foremost important, followed by the steel. Of course, none of this matters if the polishing isnt down properly, but they were able to show me examples of white steels with good and bad looking hamons, and the same with blue steels. They were also pretty clear on the hamon being visible having really no effect on the blade performance. Its hard to argue when you have examples in front of you that differ from what you think you know.

 

[XooMG]

I've never heat treated kitchen knives specifically but I do think many makers (and layfolk) draw too simplified a picture based on hardenability, and too quickly assume that alloys that harden a little more deeply cannot produce nice looking effects.