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Oregon
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Interests
machining, casting, the past, nature, traditional archery, Jesus, and motorcycles
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Kip, if you start your holes with a center drill, they won't walk.
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Haha, I'm waiting for the same thing to get some ITC and handle materials. I saw your guillotine, very nice!
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Hurry up Matt, I want to see how it turns out! After I line my forge with some ITC-100 I'm gonna give it a try. Are you doing it by hand or do you have a press?
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I feel your pain, I just went through this with a tanto out of 1095. It was mainly due to no normalization and being too hot. I now quench in 130* brine for four seconds and switch to 140* sunflower oil and keep my temps at or just under critical. What I and other smiths have noticed is that Japanese sword smiths keep the spine cooler than the edge during quench, it's hard to do but I think it yields a higher success rate and gives the blade a softer spine. I followed everything I was told and my last tanto survived two quenches( had to fix the hamon) and I even left the edge around .02
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Thanks for the tutorial. I'd like to see the finished product but your pics aren't showing...
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Thanks guys, this one is really teaching me some patience. Matt, the habaki took the longest. I'm thinking about making another tsuba, not real happy how this one turned out.
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I don't have any of pics of the blade work, but it was just stock removal anyway. It's 1095 that started out at 12"x 1.5"x .1875" thick. I used furnace cement for the clay quench. I made the habaki out of a plumbing fitting. I had a pretty hard time fitting it to the blade, but It was my fault in not shaping the nakago correctly. Not sure if I should file a nice finish on it or leave it. I forged the tsuba out of a stack of roughly 15 nickels. It has some delamination around the edges, but it's not falling apart yet... I ground a HSS lathe blank I had into a graver
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Good thing that first blade cracked or who knows how long it would have taken me to learn all this! Thank you.
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I've just been using my finger. What kind of compound do you recommend?
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I'm rather uneducated on polishing and bringing out the hamon, but I sanded the blade to 2000 grit paper, then soaked in hot vinegar for five minutes, followed with more 2000 grit, then rubbing compound. I did this five or six times. Please enlighten me on the best way to do this...
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Did the HT over last night and was able to get a decent sori and the hamon will at least travel under the habaki now. I left the edge very thin (around .020") and was kind of worried during quench, but it worked out fine. I held it in the water for four seconds this time. I'm having a much harder time trying to get the hamon to come out on this one...
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Miles, not sure if that would effect the hamon or not, might be worth experimenting with.
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Thanks for the encouragement Stuart, I normalized it last night and might give it a try again tonight.
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JPH, thank you for the info, I too am rather "frugal"... I'll have to look into the soda quench. Kevin, I don't have the resources as of yet to precisely control my temperatures and am finding it hard to get them right in my propane forge. I might have to build a bigger coal forge so I can control it better and get a slightly cooler spine during HT.
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I made two more blades and tried my hand at heat treating one. I left the edge about nickel thick (.050") and normalized it the night before. I used a thinner layer of furnace cement and pulled it further toward the edge this time. I also quenched in brine for three seconds and then into 130* sunflower oil till the activity stopped. No pings, but the hamon stops about halfway down the edge. I think I was a little too cautious on the temperature... I also didn't get any sori, which really takes away from it having any soul. I tried a new pattern with the clay that I'm also not happy wit