Thread: Hamon- I found a few

Anyone that has blades with hamons post them so we can all enjoy them.

Oops did you mean razors

They look pretty cool Stefan. The Fon's quite chunky. Not tamahagane is it ?

I often notice a 'line' on the tangs of old Sheffield blades during sanding and polishing - must be the same thing. Awesome hamon there Oz, I dream about finding the Honjo Masamune...

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Oops did you mean razors

They look pretty cool Stefan. The Fon's quite chunky. Not tamahagane is it ?

Oz swords are cool too.
The FON is stamped Extra Steel on the tang, I was surprised they did such heat treat in factory though.

The edge is hardened, always.
While it is very easy to drop the temperature of a part of a blade, it is very to do the reverse without also soaking heat in the rest of the blade where you really don't want the heat.

Btw and just to avoid the confusion: it is perfectly possible to achieve a hamon without even trying. The spine is very thick. The edge is thin. When the razor gets dunked in oil (presumably) the edge part will cool instantly while the thick spine will cool more slowly. Esp if oil is used, the spine will not get hard so much. There might be some surface hardness, but since the razor is ground after heat treatment, that would disappear with the grinding process, leaving you with a razor that has a soft spine, a hard edge, and a visible hamon if the steel did not have alloying elements that prevent the formation of a visible hamon.

It is even possible that they clamp the blade between plates to prevent yield loss due to warp. I bet that those FON razors were not really HTed with the intention to create a hamon. If they had, they would have made it visible. They didn't, which suggests that it is a side effect.

In fact, I did have a swedish steel razor made in Japan which had a temper line running through the tang where it had been clamped when it was quenched. The part between the clamp did not cool rapidly and was softer than the part of the tagn near the blade. If you are HTing simple carbon steel that has thin and thick portions, you are bound to get temper lines whether you want them or not.

Might be a fun experiment to do when my forge is up and running again, to see if a razor made from simple file steel gets temper lines or not.

Originally Posted by Bruno

The edge is hardened, always.
While it is very easy to drop the temperature of a part of a blade, it is very to do the reverse without also soaking heat in the rest of the blade where you really don't want the heat.

Btw and just to avoid the confusion: it is perfectly possible to achieve a hamon without even trying. The spine is very thick. The edge is thin. When the razor gets dunked in oil (presumably) the edge part will cool instantly while the thick spine will cool more slowly. Esp if oil is used, the spine will not get hard so much. There might be some surface hardness, but since the razor is ground after heat treatment, that would disappear with the grinding process, leaving you with a razor that has a soft spine, a hard edge, and a visible hamon if the steel did not have alloying elements that prevent the formation of a visible hamon.

It is even possible that they clamp the blade between plates to prevent yield loss due to warp. I bet that those FON razors were not really HTed with the intention to create a hamon. If they had, they would have made it visible. They didn't, which suggests that it is a side effect.

In fact, I did have a swedish steel razor made in Japan which had a temper line running through the tang where it had been clamped when it was quenched. The part between the clamp did not cool rapidly and was softer than the part of the tagn near the blade. If you are HTing simple carbon steel that has thin and thick portions, you are bound to get temper lines whether you want them or not.

Might be a fun experiment to do when my forge is up and running again, to see if a razor made from simple file steel gets temper lines or not.

I like the hamons cosmetically, the ones with more details especially.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I bet that those FON razors were not really HTed with the intention to create a hamon. If they had, they would have made it visible. They didn't, which suggests that it is a side effect.

I disagree.many Honyaki style chef knife intention to creat hamon but not for cosmetic just for quality of the cutting edge that why they woundn't have made it visible.