hamon?

Last night I was hand polishing a largeish edge quenched file steel blade and took it to 800 grit.I am getting a plainly visible hardening line (hamon to use the Japanese term?) and am astonished at the complexity of it. There are little cloud shapes floating along and above the main line. I think there are Japanese terms for just about all of these variations in the hamon but dont know what to call this. I am now thinking of etching the blade to try and bring this out more. Any thoughts? Is this unusual? I was very surprised.

What your seeing is fairly common when you polish out an edge quenched blade made of low alloy, or plain carbon steel. The cloudy areas are "trasition" zones where the steel is not fully hardened, nor is it soft either.....sort of in between. If you etch it you will see more of the bold part of the temper line and less of the cloudy area. It's not that the etch will erase any of the areas, but the main temper line will become bold to the point that it will be the first thing the eye is drawn to. You will get varying degrees of grays when you etch, and the grain structure will become visible. The good part is that if you don't like what the etch does, you have the option of re-polishing the blade, and it will be back to where you are now. (although it will take as much work as it did the first time!)

I did etch this blade in dilute ferric chloride, which emphasised the hamon . I am not at all sure that I like it! I polished it back with the 800 grit and it looks better. I think I will just have to wait and see how it looks farther along in the process. like the songs says, ...farther along, we'll know all about it..."

Foxcreek, if you can't find the terminology you are looking for (I saw a great book on temper lines once and I can't remember what it is anymore!) you may want to shoot an email to Sean Perkins. I think he is familiar with the terms and how to identify different shapes in temper lines. There is a book on Japanese swords or swordmaking that I saw at Borders once that had this info and it was clearly explained along with pics. Shoulda bought it!