I was heat treating this little drop point last night and had a little mix up. I almost dropped the blade while going into the quench, causing me to hesitate slightly with the blade about half in. I checked the edge with a file after and it appeared to be hardened so I proceeded to tempering. The surprise came this morning. I have found that bead blasting and finishing with cold bluing gives a nice dark matte gray finish and I used this finish on this knife. After bluing, I noticed what appears to be a hamon. Kind of threw me since I've heard that it is difficult to get a hamon with 1084. Granted, it isn't a very good one. I'm not sure if it would show up if I polished it to try and get a hamon or if it is something about the cold bluing that helped to bring it out, but it was an interesting learning experience either way.
(http://i1246.photobucket.com/albums/gg614/tomsm44/image.jpg) (http://s1246.photobucket.com/user/tomsm44/media/image.jpg.html)
As I'm short at least one (if not more) hamon, if you'd like to just send that my way I think we can call it sorted.
Very interesting, and I do like that blade.
Thanks. I like the way it looks too. The only problem is that it is one in a set of 9 matching knives and this will be the only one with a hamon.
I would make a new one. I know it's work, but if I had a set of knives and only one had a hamon, I'd want the rest to match.
You don't need me telling you you do good work-the fact that you have an order for matching knives does that for you.
I haven't ruled it out. I'm going to try a few more coats of cold blue and see if the color will even out. It won't affect the knifw's performance, just the appearance. If that doesn't work, I'll redo it. I have until Christmas and I have six of them finished. If I do that, I'll probably sand off the bluing and try to polish it and see if I can get a half way decent more traditional hamon.