Does anyone have any experience with this steel? I keep hearing the W2 can be hit and miss. I just ordered a 3 ft bar looking to make a few chef's for the sole purpose trying to get my first hamons. I'll be heat treating in my oven and using Parks 50 to quench. Brine quench scares me. I see Walter Sorel's suggestion about etching with lemon juice to get the hamon to pop more. I'm hoping someone has a HT recipe and clay suggestion that can be easily found in Canada. Also, what hardness values pre and post temper should I be looking for in a kitchen blade? Finally, what thickness at the edge do you suggest leaving before heat treat? I hope this works out. I think a nice whispy hamon is one of the most beautiful things in knives.
When I tried my first hamon used refractory cement from Canadian Tire. I had some leftover from making my ht oven, It worked well. The one thing that I did think of was when you do the quench the clay falls off, I was using water so big deal. But I'm not sure if that clay would contaminate your oil and ruin its cool curve.
Scott, I believe Robs W2 is from Aldo. I have some but have yet to use it because I was hoping to improve my skills a bit before using it on a possible ‘Big Blade,’ project. Don Hanson is a W2 guru and he can be found talking about his HT on Blade forums here below. All credit to Don Hanson, original post here: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/w2.1397069/ Best of luck Scott, I’ll be following Don’s recipe myself *thumb up*. And there are multiple posts on W2, I can’t seem to find the one where he goes super in-depth including the normalizing temps, but it is all there. Another interesting thing is he recommends Parks at Room temp, so don’t heat it before hand. I’ve seen Walter do an interrupted quench, Water for 1-2-3 count and then into Parks. Scary lol! I heard Jason Knight say once that the only ‘real,’ W2 was in Alaska, *shrug*
Oh and here is a laugh, to show you how long I have had this W2...here is my post on it here haha! https://www.canadianknifemaker.ca/index.php?threads/w2.3245/ And by the way Commonwealth Oil was useless, no help, but no worries, I have proper oil for every speed of steel now.
Thanks griff. I ordered a 3ft bar so it should work for a few kitchen blades. I also just got some parks 50 just for this. We'll see how it goes. Always like trying something new.
