Can pur alcohol change or reveal some aspect of hamon?

[Widowmaker]

Hello, everyone,

 

The alcohol I purchased from a reputed ebayer has arrived yesterday evening. I cleaned my sword with a microfiber cloth with this alcohol. It is 99,9% isopropylic alcohol.

 

What is suprising is that, when I looked my sword after cleaning it under light, I discover something like choji style hamon that I didn't notice before applying the alcohol. We can observ this if I place the Nihonto vertically under the light and looked at it carefully.

 

Is it normal? I didn't see this before when I examined the sword under light. (or maybe I didn't pay attention).

 

It is hard to take photos right now, since I am alone and no one could help me holding the sword. But I will try to find a way to make some photos.

 

Thank you in advance.

[Gabriel L]

Isopropyl alcohol doesn't react with steel and certainly cannot change the underlying hamon. It just acts as a solvent, e.g. for dried oil. There are several possibilities I can think of:

 

• The alcohol left some water streaks which are masquerading as hamon/hataraki
  
• The details of the hamon were previously masked by dried oil etc.
  
• You simply never noticed this detail in the hamon before

 

If the alcohol is brand new 99% then the first (water streaks) is less likely, but still possible. There is kind of an art to wiping down with alcohol without leaving streaks. But this isn't necessarily what's happening. I suspect the answer is a combination of the second and third points.

 

BTW, anhydrous alcohol is hygroscopic, meaning it will pull water out of the air and dilute itself over time. Just a side note.

[Ken-Hawaii]

I agree with Gabriel that no alcohol can or will react with iron or steel in any way whatsoever, & that his observations on what might have happened are likely the case, too.

 

Ken

[Kronos]

IPA gets rid of pretty much everything except the steel, so most likely dried oil or w/e matter was on the katana that you may not of even been aware of. It's like looking through a window without any discernible dirt then giving it a clean and noticing the view is so much better than before.

[Ed Harbulak]

It's amazing how even the thinnest coating of clean oil will hide much of the activity in a freshly polished blade. I'll bet if you reoil your blade now that it's perfectly clean and dry, a good bit of the activity will be masked again even if you try to wipe all the oil off. Without using a solvent like alcohol to remove oil, it's almost impossible to wipe off the last traces. Oil does protect, but to a certain extent it also hides a lot.

[kusunokimasahige]

But............. Is my question then..... Can Alcohol interfere with Nugui ?

 

KM

[Ken-Hawaii]

Normally, the nugui is applied to something soft, like a cotton ball, & then used to very gently polish out rust spots or something similar. I can't see how alcohol would make any difference at all, Henk-Jan, although I've not tried that myself.

 

Ken

[Gabriel L]

My understanding is that nugui isn't deposited / doesn't form a coat on the blade, it's just one more polishing compound with its own characteristic method of abrasion & hardness. I could be wrong on that, but if I am correct, then again it is simply a physical process, leaving a steel surface with which the iPrOH will have no interaction. Otherwise the effect of nugui would be wiped out quite quickly by other cleaning methods, e.g. uchiko, anyway.

 

Would be good to get some hard info on nugui's precise mechanism of action.

[GregD]

Nugui is the physical process,something from Sword Forum....http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showth ... inquiries-)

[Gabriel L]

Thank you Greg, an interesting discussion on SFI. Always glad to have the semantics cleared up a bit too.

[kusunokimasahige]

Great info guys !! Thank you !

 

KM