Bringing out a hamon

B

brad Mcdonald

Member
I'm having trouble bringing a hamon out in a 52100 blade. I know 52100 isn't the greatest steel to get a defined hamon out of but it's not unheard of. I had it heat treated by Peter's. I might have gone wrong by having it heat treated before grinding. But I could clearly see it when it came back. Now, after grinding and finishing down to 600 grit then etching, it's nowhere to be seen. Shouldn't I be able to see it by now, or do I need to keep going up in grit? Did I really go wrong by grinding after heat treat?

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You can't get a hamon on 52100..
You can however get a quench line if you edge quench it. You're looking for 1075, 1095 , W2 and W1 for a good hamon.

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I don't know how you were expecting a hamon from Peter's unless they are offering to clay coat it for you. As stated above, 52100 has way too much chromium to give a "natural" hamon and I think it would be difficult to coat the blade with clay heavily enough to get one by that method. Also, as stated above, the closest that you can come to a hamon with 52100 is a quench line formed by differential hardening via edge quenching. You're also not going to grind away a hamon or quench line. If the differential hardening was there it's still there whether the hamon is or not. You might try etching the blade to see if what you saw reappears. If it doesn't then I'd say that you never had a hamom in the first place.

Realize also of all that hamons don't do anything other than demonstrate that differential hardening has been done. The differential hardening may or may not be useful to the function of the of any give knife. You might want to consider that when attempting one.

Doug
 
Thanks for the input guys. Peters does offer a clay hardening service. I could see where the clay was applied when I got it back. So what you guys are saying is, clay or no clay, 52100 is going to through harden like say O1? That is unless you only heat the edge.

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