Victor Creazzi
King of Bondo
I just registered for Howard's Sept. class.
Howard Clark's Class
- Thread starter Victor Creazzi
- Start date
Victor Creazzi
King of Bondo
Yeah, it's centered around hamon creation, but is going to be heavy on all the aspects of low hardenability steels. I'm not particularly interested in hamons per say, but very interested in the rest of the class.
Howard has made some statements lately that don't quite fit in with my experiences. I figure that by going directly to the horse, and working with him in his shop, I will be able to figure out why I'm seeing a discrepancy. Plus I'm sure I'll learn a bunch of stuff that I don't know that I don't know.
Class is limited to four students and is five days, so it almost can't help but be intensive. I can hardly wait. Wahoo!
Howard has made some statements lately that don't quite fit in with my experiences. I figure that by going directly to the horse, and working with him in his shop, I will be able to figure out why I'm seeing a discrepancy. Plus I'm sure I'll learn a bunch of stuff that I don't know that I don't know.
Class is limited to four students and is five days, so it almost can't help but be intensive. I can hardly wait. Wahoo!
Victor Creazzi
King of Bondo
Had a great experience at Howard's class. There were two other students making several blades each.
I purposely only made one integral bolster kitchen knife to produce a hamon on so that whenever the other classmates were involved with grinding or whatever and didn't need Howard's attention I could discus academic aspects of heat treating without taking class time from the other students. This worked out well, as the other students were more concentrated on using the equipment that they didn't have access to at home. My physical work load was low so I could easily move it around to suit. I was also able to complete all of my pre quench grinding while the other students were still forging blanks so there weren't bottle necks at the grinders. Howard did have four grinders available for the class, but the different setups were somewhat dedicated to particular machines.
I was camping nearby in a 'primitive' site at Yellow Banks Campground. My site was in the trees with no electricity or visual contact with any other campers. I also cooked my own breakfasts and dinners there, so there was a lot of alone time. I had a good book in progress, but had plenty of uninterrupted time to think about what I was learning from Howard. It was kind of a five day emersion with only self imposed distractions.
Knife Steel Nerds had put out a very timely article regarding thermal cycling simple knife steels. I had printed out a hard copy of the article, which Howard had seen on line and liked, though he didn't totally agree with everything in the article. The hard copy provided a good framework and a convenient note pad for me to use as a starting point on many of the aspects that I was discussing with Howard.
I purposely only made one integral bolster kitchen knife to produce a hamon on so that whenever the other classmates were involved with grinding or whatever and didn't need Howard's attention I could discus academic aspects of heat treating without taking class time from the other students. This worked out well, as the other students were more concentrated on using the equipment that they didn't have access to at home. My physical work load was low so I could easily move it around to suit. I was also able to complete all of my pre quench grinding while the other students were still forging blanks so there weren't bottle necks at the grinders. Howard did have four grinders available for the class, but the different setups were somewhat dedicated to particular machines.
I was camping nearby in a 'primitive' site at Yellow Banks Campground. My site was in the trees with no electricity or visual contact with any other campers. I also cooked my own breakfasts and dinners there, so there was a lot of alone time. I had a good book in progress, but had plenty of uninterrupted time to think about what I was learning from Howard. It was kind of a five day emersion with only self imposed distractions.
Knife Steel Nerds had put out a very timely article regarding thermal cycling simple knife steels. I had printed out a hard copy of the article, which Howard had seen on line and liked, though he didn't totally agree with everything in the article. The hard copy provided a good framework and a convenient note pad for me to use as a starting point on many of the aspects that I was discussing with Howard.
Victor Creazzi
King of Bondo
My thoughts exactly.
I'm going to put a handle on it before pictures. I did a very simple hamon.
Victor Creazzi
King of Bondo
Yes, like I expected, I learned a bunch of stuff that I didn't know, that I didn't know. The biggest benefit was being able to state things that I thought were happening to the microstucture to Howard and get his reaction to my assessments. Without that, I sometimes felt that I was just agreeing with myself and could be drumming in things into my own head that weren't true. So, even though I was doing things right, I didn't have full confidence that that was the case.