Ok, not really. But the way this spear came out made me really happy:
It's made from an old Buck Bros. mortise chisel a friend picked up for me at a tag sale. Woodworkers, before you kill me just let me say I intended to use it as a chisel but the back was so out of square it would have taken a ridiculous amount of grinding to fix it. So I made it into a spear.
Whatever steel it was made of produced a pretty awesome hamon without me even trying. The darker steel in the center did not get fully to the critical temperature, and so when quenched it forms a softer crystal structure that appears darker. The outer edges did get to critical temp, and so formed a harder structure. The hamon is what the Japanese call the transition line between the two. Having the softer steel in the center is actually good because it helps absorb shock, while the hard edge still cuts. It's also pretty:
And very difficult to photograph. The edges have a mirror polish to show off the wisps coming of the dark center, which leads to this:
Wave to the photographer in the blade. But it does show in the upper center how the blade tend to look in person. The center appear lighter and the edges look dark with white wisps coming off it. Maybe a light tent with a black background would work...
