Hamons with NO CLAY?

There has been so much discussed here I am not sure which part of the whole we are focusing on now. Believe it or not I am actually a simple man who knows how easy it is to miss the forest for the trees. Sometimes when being a knifemaker one has to just throw caution in the wind and simply make a knife before fretting the details gets in the way of that essential act. One's first knife will not be perfect, and one can be certain that their 5,000th knife will not be perfect either, if they are on an affective path of improvement. There are countless ways of tweeking the methods to squeeze that last 2% but they don't mean much until we just go ahead and shoot for the other 98% first.
 
Kevin R. Cashen said:
There has been so much discussed here I am not sure which part of the whole we are focusing on now. Believe it or not I am actually a simple man who knows how easy it is to miss the forest for the trees. Sometimes when being a knifemaker one has to just throw caution in the wind and simply make a knife before fretting the details gets in the way of that essential act. One's first knife will not be perfect, and one can be certain that their 5,000th knife will not be perfect either, if they are on an affective path of improvement. There are countless ways of tweeking the methods to squeeze that last 2% but they don't mean much until we just go ahead and shoot for the other 98% first.
Click to expand...

Kevin,

I sent you a PM this morning trying to explain what I was hoping you would answer. I feel like I don't get a straight answer, because there is just so much information. I understand that you have to make a knife and test out the waters, but I want to understand what is going on before I do anything, plus I don't have tools to compare the grains. I still would like to know about the thermal cycling to reduce grain for W2 and 1095 since you brought it up often in this thread.

I have seen people talk about thermal cycling below the critical temps 1350, three times, and I have seen people say they thermal cycle at 1600, 1500, 1400x3 to reduce the grain. I would like to know the differences between the two and if thermal cycling at 1600, 1500, 1400x3 works? I think that the thermal cycling, which should reduce the grain is important when trying to get a hamon with clay and without clay.
 
The higher ranges will work for austenite grains as well as carbide refinement. The lower temperatures will only work for grain, and may even coarsen carbide a bit. What happens when folks cycle grain below A1 (around 1335F) is that they produce duplexing or sub-grain nucleation where new baby grains are formed amidst the previous ones but recrystallization is not complete.

The reason I dance around this and so many other discussions is that I do not recommend nor do I deal in recipes. I believe that recipes are a trap that gives a false sense of security on a topic so vast and complex that single rigid instructions can only limit one to a path of mediocrity. My goal is to give people the tools to write their own recipes and the adaptability to be able to troubleshoot their own unique circumstances.

As of late I see many folks saying that they followed XXX’s instructions and got these results, be it good or bad. With all the variables from one shop to another XXXX can neither take credit nor blame for those results unless he was actually standing over the persons shoulder while they were doing it. My end results are very consistent in my shop but I am continually adjusting and adapting every step of the way on every batch of knives to get those consistent results. A recipe with set temps and steps wouldn’t get me there, only knowledge and experience can allow me to stay on my toes and keep things on track.

When material science becomes a simplified set of instructions that we rigidly adhere to, it is no different than the voodoo,” quench by the light of the blue moon” type of nonsense that knifemaking has suffered through for so long. I just don’t want to see one dogma replaced with another.
 
Kevin, thank you. I believe that the "recipe" idea is not the greatest as well.

However, I did not know how to ask the questions any other way. When I try to talk to makers and get more information and specifics about this kind of information, some of them don't really want to look at knife making that way, others try, and some of the forum posts are just wrong. I have been reading as many books about it as I can but you can only get so far. I can't test everything that I would like to because I do not have the equipment and all of the know-how, so that is why I ask you.

So I really do appreciate your help and direction and then the new ideas that you bring across that allow me to continue making myself more educated as a knife maker.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top