[Keith Larman]

I just finished a tanto for Howard Clark. It's a really unusual piece that he did as an experiment. I'm currently using it as a "study case" on another forum to see what people can tell about the tanto from the photos. But anyway, I thought I'd post a picture here since it is interesting. For those of you going to the Knife Guild Show in Orlando in August, Howard will be there with this piece on display. Apparently he'll also have a bare, unpolished L6 katana for sale which is noteworthy because he's stopped taking orders a while back.

Anyway, this tanto is *HUGE*... It is just a hair over 12 inches long and the width... Well, I never measured it but the sucker is simply gigantic. It is actually part of a daisho and the daito (long sword) is *HUGE* as well. Something like 36" of cutting edge and with a width proportional to this tanto. It has affectionately become known as the "buffalo killer".

I grumbled and growled during the entire polish and especially foundation. I couldn't figure out why it was tough on the stones and why I couldn't quite figure out what was going on in the hamon. Well, I know now... Talk about wild and please pardon the streaky oil on the blade...



And while I'm at it, the Knife Guild show is at the Rennaisance Hotel at Sea World in Orlando, Florida from August 5 through the 7th. Lots of good folk have tables there in addition to Howard Clark. They have a site at: http://www.knifemakersguild.com/kmg-show-current.htm

Anyway, all just fwiw.

[Russ Ellis]

Oh my gosh what a beast Keith! How many hours did it take to polish that monstrosity out?

[Keith Larman]

[Shane Allee]

That is a wild and very cool blade there Keith.

Kind of wish I could see a bit more of the tang on it. Wouldn't be surprized to hear that it was just tossed into the quenchant or even quenched edge up. So you could say I'm somewhat stumped. *G* Stinks I won't be able to check back to find out for several days.

Shane

[Don Halter]

Man, I get lost gazing into that activity! Really cool!



Guess:
Varied the thickness of the clay from the just under the spine, to the lower edge of the clay towards the bottom and back towards the mune, tapering it down in both directions. Scraped out lines/pockets from within the clayed area, but not through to the unclayed area of the blade. Scraped out areas coming up from the unclayed area so that they fell inbetween the pockets scraped out. Quenched using a quenchant slightly slower than water.

[Lee O'Hagan]

Be still my beating heart,
WOW,
Guess,
Repeated edge quench,no clay used,
boy am i gonna regret writing that,shuffles back in to the dark,
Thanks keith,fantastic, will we be able to see the rest of the family when there ready,

[Thomas Hoogendam]

Keith, that's just amazing. Right now, I'm not sure what impresses me more, Howard's skill at forging, or your skill at polishing.

[Keith Larman]

Okay, full description (well, as full as I can give since I'm just relaying what i was told).

The blade is a san mai construction blade with high layer steel as the "skin" steel (think the bread in a sandwich). Howard folded it one additional time from Daryl "Grandpa" Meier's original stock that he made for Howard. In between is some of Howard's custom 1086 steel. This stuff has aggressive vanadium carbides with the proper heat treatment. The 1086 is very tough steel when correctly heat treated and is a difficult steel at best on the stones. My understanding is that it also doesn't like to weld like some other steels, so getting the high carbon, high layer count steel to weld so cleanly to the 1086 is an important point.

With respect to the heat treatment... A little background for those not into traditional Japanese heat treatment. The Japanese steels were very expensive to create. They weren't exactly rich in steel sources. They'd smelt iron bearing sand to create their steels. Anyway, much of the work on these things was a result of refining what was ultimately a fairly poor quality product into the best steel they could make (and yes, that is not to be confused with the notion of the best steel ever -- just the best they could do given what they had). Given what they had, the shape of their weapons and the style of usage, they settled on a method where they'd harden just the edge to get a very hard and even brittle edge. But then they'd keep the back of the blade soft to improve the sword's ability to survive use without shattering. To do this they'd place clay on the back of the blade to offer insulation. When the blade is heated to the correct point, the structure of the carbon steel changes. If quenched and the heat removed fast enough, the hardened steel structure is essentially "frozen" into the steel. By insulating the back of the blade the back doesn't have the heat removed as quickly so it is able to revert to softer steel. When a blade made that way is polished the hardened edge looks different than the softer back. The edge gets a whitish tone while the back is a softer, darker look. The transition zone between the two end up being usually very light with a misty look.

What Howard did with this piece was to work with the relative thickness variation of the blade, heating it just right, and then using a quenchant that he knew would be fast enough to "lock in" the edge but allow the back to revert without using any clay at all. So Lee pretty much got it. There was no clay used on the blade to create the hamon -- it was just quenched bare and the hamon is what resulted. What happened was that the transition zone got very wild because of the slightest variations in conditions. Things like the tiniest differences in thickness, mass, differences between the two types of steel used, how the moon aligned with venus, etc. So the habuchi (transition zone) is tracking all sorts of things. The welds in the folded steel for example.

The back often ends up hardened in these blades because the back has more surface area in contact with the quenchant (side and back so the "corners" get hardened). I've heard from high ranking smiths in Japan that they think some blades historically were done this way as well (which was a somewhat secret method). If you look at the old soshu school, they had some blades that were called hitatsura that shared a lot of what you see in this blade. The muneyaki (hardened mune bits), tobiyaki (hardened bits in the softer ji), and the way things just formed. Note that they were also well known for using very complex construction methods which would itself also help make for a wilder, active hamon assuming they were not using clay as much as others.

The other observation is that usually the clay doesn't paint on the hamon. It is an attempt to try to control it somewhat. So some really active, gorgeously controlled hamon done with clay show the control of the smith over the steel in just another way. The other variables of steel type, thickness, quenchant heat extraction rate, initial heats, etc. all come into play whether they like it or not. The clay just tries to constrain it. So it can happen with lots of clay or no clay at all. It just depends on how well the smith knows the steel, the heat, the quenchant, etc. And how close to the edge of failure they want to walk...

Anyway, what I really like about this blade is that it is a testament to precise forging and incredible control over all the variables. All at the same time allowing the steel to do "what it wants to do" in the final quench. So a combination of control and understanding of the steel and process combined with also one of the most organic looking end results possible.

Cool, eh?

[Thomas McDonald]

That is a fabulous blade, Keith .... not that you need me to tell you that :-)
I just luv the way Howard is constantly trying new experiments, controlled or otherwise, and exploring what he can do !

Pretty neat polish there too, laddie !

Thank you for the concise & easy to understand discription of what is going on with that one, as well as how these style blades are done ..... you really have a great knack for teaching, Keith !

Many thanks, and way to go team ! :-) Mac

[Patrick Kelly]

That's a beautiful blade Keith thanks for posting it. There's an incredible amount of activity going on there.

I'd love the see a sword blade done in that fashion.

[Keith Larman]

[Keith Larman]

[Leo Lee]

Wow, the hamon is awesome!
Great polish as well.
Keith, do you know how the blade is tempered? and is it oil quenched? 1086 steel seems little too brittle for water quench.
Awesome hamon....

[Gabriel Stevens]

I could have sworn I saw a fully mounted Katana done by Howard with a similarly wild hamon on it, but then maybe a totally different technique was used for that one. Beautiful blade though. I'm constantly amazed by Howard's blades and Keith's polishes.