[Picture Hvy] Some of my Orishigane for Japanese Blades.

[Daniel Cauble]

A new tanto forged from a Sunobe I made awhile back with the same billet. Hira-zakuri.

 

[Daniel Cauble]

Some interesting effects with hamon and hada after HT.

 

This is after using a 180grit stone. No acid.

[Alan Longmire]

Looking great!

[Daniel Cauble]

Ok, so I thermal cycled a sample piece of the bar I just formed into a small tanto, casted it in a puck of epoxy and polished it for micros.

 

Given then 65RC at 1485F, the explosive spark, and the starting materials being ultra high carbon and even some white cast, what I seen here is a lot of GBC. The heavier white areas are still diffusing into the adjacent layers, even after 12 folds. Amazing.

 

[Daniel Cauble]

The last of this 12 fold bar. 

 

[Daniel Cauble]

From that 180 grit stone I went to a 220, 320, 600, and then 1000. The 220-1000 are a hard coarse synthetics I originally invested in for kitchen knives, but specifically and especially for yanagiba due to thr shinogi present there.

 

I have coarser natural arato stuck in Japan and shipping currently, but these synths work great as well.

 

From there I moves back to a coarse Iyo-to which could be interpreted as a ~500 grit stone, but it is where I currently begin natural progressions.

 

After thr Iyo-to, I moved onto the Binsui-do. The Binsui is could be interpreted as a 800-1000 grit stone, but is again, a brick of natural stone goodness. Next will be Kaisei-do, though not pictured yet.

 

I honestly haven't really shared my natural stone collection here before, but it has grown quite extensive, and have left spent 5 years in pretty regular and often every day for months on end learning tennen-toishi.

 

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by Daniel Cauble

[Daniel Cauble]

Tendrils look more crystalline now that the steel is clearing up. Again...cementite...

 

Also, for some reason my pic is flipped.

 

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by Daniel Cauble

[Joshua States]

I don't know if you are pleased with the outcome, but I'm thinking this is pretty cool stuff!

Edited March 15, 2021 by Joshua States

[Daniel Cauble]

5 hours ago, Joshua States said:

I don't know if you are pleased with the outcome, but I'm thinking this is pretty cool stuff!

It is close to what I wanted but I'm practically never satisfied with anything so it's a constant battle.

 

Over the weekend I progressed through the stones but realized I had missed scratches from the Kaisei-do and used the Chu Nagura in thr wrong direction, which allowed thr scratches from the Kaisei to remain hidden until I made it to the Koma Nagura.

 

Well I was impatient and decided to power through anyway, leaving the scratches for now before going back in stones and polishing again.

 

I did a quick Hadori to see how it would look. Not too bad.

 

Pictures are orienting pretty dumb lately but whatever.

 

Chu Naguras

 

Koma

 

Uchigumori-Hato

 

 

Uchigumori-Jito

 

 

 

Then I did a quick hadori which involves fingerstones and nugui. This darkens the Ji and whitens the Ha.

 

These are the most apparent scratches left over by the Kaisei, but there are others on the blade. I mistake in polishing and costing many hours.

 

 

 

[dan pfanenstiel]

Legacy scratches are the bane of my existence, and the polisher’s reason for the saying “the slower you go, the faster you’ll get done”.

 

Dan

[Daniel Cauble]

22 minutes ago, dan pfanenstiel said:

Legacy scratches are the bane of my existence, and the polisher’s reason for the saying “the slower you go, the faster you’ll get done”.

 

Dan

Yea, that's for sure. I realized it pretty early on, but I was too concerned with seeing how some of the metallurgy evolved. It's pretty unusual, and honestly, pretty hard. I left thr blade in a very hard state at 64 RC at the Ha, and with thr mixture of so much cementite in the Ji, it's a tougher polish.

 

Usually I'm making sanmai kitchen knives and go through the stages of polishing those similarly, but still a bit different. 

 

Which reminds me, I haven't shown knives like that here in years.