Walter Sorrells

Oh, forgot to add the link to the video. As an amusing (and infuriating) side note, you might notice that I go to great pains to avoid using any words like "gun," "rifle," "caliber," etc. during the video. This is because Youtube will dump your video in the same no-advertising pot as videos promoting genocide, racism, Illinois Nazi-ism, etc. if you make the mistake of edging anywhere close to the subject of guns.

Hey guys, thanks for the nice comments. To answer some of the questions above: 1. Not sure exactly what the carbon content is. My guess would be .5-ish, something similar to 1050. I didn't spark test it, per se, but as I was grinding, the sparks looked pretty much like any generic medium carbon steel. I did test a coupon before making the blade to make sure it was hardenable. That's shown in the video. It hardened pretty easily in Parks #50, but produced a good hamon...leading me to believe that it's wasn't much below .5 and didn't have a ton of manganese in it. But that's total guesswork on my part. 2. The mild steel rod was inserted in the barrel (with a very tight fit) and then the whole thing was squashed together at welding heat, so the mild steel is completely encased inside the harder steel. As I understand it, that was indeed the way that Mantetsu blades were formed. For those who aren't into Japanese swords, Mantetsu swords were made from a steel developed during WWII in Japanese-held Manchuria specifically for use as a sword steel. It's one of the those things that you hear a lot of BS about, so sometimes it's a little hard to separate fact from fiction on the subject, though! 3. The little shadow or shift in color that Charles spotted is just streaking caused by the refraction of light through the oil on the blade.

Haven't posted on here in several years, but I thought this might be a fun blade to jump back on here with. This tanto was made from an Enfield Mark III barrel with a mild steel core forge welded into it. The idea was to mimic the kobuse forge welding scheme used in many Japanese swords. It was kind of an interesting process getting the hot core down the barrel during welding. If I did it over again, I might have done a few things differently in the forge welding process, but it seemed to work out okay. I did a video on my Youtube channel. I can add the link if anybody's interested in seeing it.

I wish there was a simple answer about how to not crack blades when water hardening...but it just happens. As Gabriel said, you may have overshot your target temp. But that's not necessarily the culprit. Another thing to bear in mind is that 1060 typically has a higher manganese content than, say, 1050, 1075, 1095, W1 and other carbon steels. This not only makes it a little more susceptible to cracking when water quenching, but it makes it a less-than-ideal candidate for developing interesting and complex hamons.

I like it! Nice knife, nice micarta...

I like the whole rig! Nice job both of you...

Wow. Beautiful!

Lots of good stuff here! Looking forward to seeing the final result. Also, I'm loving the twist-o-matic.

That just has one wonderful detail after another. The bolster is great, as is the little piece with the thong hole at the back. Also very ingenious and complicated. I imagine you must have felt like shooting yourself in the head at several points during the making of that knife!

The mill is probably in one of my videos on Youtube.

Hey Kevin, Yeah, aren't mills beautiful? Anyway, as to your question: I quench into water for about 4 to 5 seconds -- basically until I get the curvature I want -- then go immediately into 300 degree Fahrenheit oil. This seems to prevent cracking (mostly), but still gives me the kind of hamons I'm looking for. If you look at the quench curve for Park's 50, they say it mimics water down to the martensite start range...but the fact is that it's slower. Not a lot but a little. I've never used Parks, so I can't say that it wouldn't give me what I'm looking for in a hamon. But I will say that nobody that I know of gets hamons that look quite like mine. That's neither here nor there, except in the sense that I know I can get what I'm looking for by doing it the way that I do it. Everybody lays on their clay in their own way, and heats the blade in their own way with their own equipment, and takes their own approach to normalizing and tempering and so on. Any of these variables can and will effect the end result. Which is great. We should all aim for our blades to be distinctive and personal. All I can say with any certainty is that when everything goes right, the method I use gives me results that seem (relatively) close to those found on traditionally made Japanese blades with choji hamons...which is what I'm aiming for. And I don't crack many blades. So that's why I stick with it. I will make a general point about the well-meaning folks you speak of. The internet is stuffed to the gills with people who will tell you that they know the right answer to every question, right up to meaning of life. My experience is that there are very few interesting questions that only have one right answer. If there's more than one reasonable answer to the question of what the meaning of life is, then surely there's more than one way to get a squiggly line on a knife. Thus endeth the sermon.

Here's a katana I completed recently. It's a hira-zukuri (ridgeless) blade forged from W2. Blade length is 27 or 28 inches and included a shirasaya.

Beautiful work as usual!

Kinda reminds me of a "sampler" -- the old needlework projects women used to do to show off the various kinds of stitches they could do. Great showpiece!

Pretty cool!

I like that finish, too. I'll have to try that sometime!

Sweet!

I like 'em all. (But especially the one with the red handle.)

Love the engraving. It has a really nice free quality that a lot of engraving lacks. Kudos. (As far as the price goes, you'd be giving that away at twice the price you mentioned!)

Looks great, one arm or not!

Great pair. I like 'em.

Very nice. I like the texturing on the bolster. Neat touch...

Wow, that's extraordinary!

That is super cool.

Wow! That's amazing...