Wakizashi question

[graveyard]

im thinking of making a Wakizashi out of 1086 stock removal blade 17 to 20 inch long & trying my first hamon how can i keep the blade striated ?

[Ray Rogers]

Striated?

[Wrankin]

Warning - I'm a complete newb, but I have been reading up quite a bit on this forum and others as well as the Bob Engnath pages. Specifically with respect to Japanese inspired designs and hamons. Here are some of the bits I have found:

- Creation of a visible hamon in a carbon steel blade can vary widely and it's not simply the amount of carbon in the steel. Many very striking hamon are seen in steels around the 1050 point. Apparently higher amounts of manganese will suppress the visibility of the hamon. You may want to run a small test sample of your steel through the HT process to see if you can get a hamon out of it before you start grinding out the wakizashi.

- Failure rates of blades during differential hardening are high. Personally I would start with a smaller (tanto) sized blade before attempting something as big as a wak.

-Did you mean "straight" or "striated" in your post? If the former then from what I have seen the differential process will impart some curve (sori) to the blade. This is also the source of a lot of stress and failures from cracking. From what I understand this can be mitigated somewhat by not claying the back (ha) of the blade, but someone with a lot more experience than me should chime in here.

Hope this helps,

-bill

[Ray Rogers]

I'd say Bill's advice was very good, especially the part about experimenting with getting a hamon on some small test blades before trying a large blade. Of course, that means you need to have enough steel from the same batch on hand to do the testing and the wakasashi .

As for keeping the blade straight, all the usual techniques apply - use as many as suits your style and ability. Those techniques include normalizing the blade and straightening as needed, quenching tip first, straightening during the temper cycles, grinding after the HT is complete, and adjusting your grind to remove a slight warp as you go.

If you have never made a long blade before I would definitely suggest you try a few before adding the extra complexity of a hamon to the problem....

[graveyard]

keeping the blade straight is my first think like a ninja short sword 17 to 20 inch, ive make a few knifes just never a hamon will a none hamon stay straight mostly?

[Ray Rogers]

Trying to create a hamon could make it harder to keep the blade straight but a blade that long always has a good chance of warping. The reason I'm suggesting not trying to do a hamon AND your first long blade at the same time is that both are extremely challenging on their own - doing them together for the first time will raise the difficulty exponentially. Grinding long blades is much, much harder than grinding short blades, especially when you have grind lines as you should have on a wakasashi. Creating a hamon is mostly about how you finish the blade (assuming you started with a steel that will produce a good hamon). Finishing for a hamon is just flat out darned difficult and it doesn't get any easier on a long blade with grind lines. All of that is in addition to keeping the blade straight.

So, do it however you want to but you'll avoid a lot of stress and get better results if you'll learn to make long blades and how to finish for hamons separately before you try to combine them ...

[R. Yates]

This is yet another Sad story of a Newbie that has Not yet learned the Basics and wants to make a sword ! you can read every site there is about Knife making yet until you actually get to the shop and do the Basics & have them down correctly with a smaller knife you will ultimately fail when you try making a sword . Sorry to say this However many newbies try to run before they can walk resulting in them falling on their face /sword due to inexperience and the lack of understanding the basic concepts of knife making .

Sam

PS Good luck with your experiments . I Do Not recommend Newbies tackling a sword until they can proficiently make a smaller knife correctly .