Adding jimping with a checkering file to a heat-treated blade -- doable?

Bill DeShivs said:
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Do your checkering before hardening.
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I would, if the knife in question weren't a mass production piece. I see four options if I didn't want to use or couldn't get a Dremel (though thanks to those who've suggested cutoff wheels and carbide bits; they sound like interesting options) -- one unlikely, two feasible, and one poor:

1. Become a knifemaker (in my dreams)
2. Accept the knife as it is
3. Get a custom knife
4. Ruin a file or two
 
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Jimping takes some practice.
IMHO you are not likely to get the result you want even accepting ruining expensive files.
You are free to do as you wish, but I suggest leaving this one alone and start thinking about the next project.
 
JG Custom Metal Works said:
You could use a small grinding stone or carbide bit. They look like a little 1/8” end mill. They’d be coarser jumping groves, but it’d be jimping.
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I’ve used Carbide burrs for jimping on 58-62 hardened steel... you do need a $200.00 plus Foredom flex shaft on the other end of the Carbide burr! I suggest just buying a knife that has the features you want! The Jimping game takes awhile to get good at!;)
 
Richard338 said:
Jimping takes some practice.
IMHO you are not likely to get the result you want even accepting ruining expensive files.
You are free to do as you wish, but I suggest leaving this one alone and start thinking about the next project.
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You make a good point; I've ruined a number of things attempting repairs and modifications I was ill-equipped to do.
 
Rhinoknives1 said:
I’ve used Carbide burrs for jimping on 58-62 hardened steel... you do need a $200.00 plus Foredom flex shaft on the other end of the Carbide burr! I suggest just buying a knife that has the features you want! The Jimping game takes awhile to get good at!;)
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Not once have a come across a knife that ticks all the right boxes for me. There's always something that could be better -- different clip, better grind, more jimping, different handle, more refined lock, different size... I suppose it's a good -- or bad, depending on how you look at it -- thing that there are so many knives to choose from.

Thanks for the tip about the carbide burrs.
 
On a related note. Don’t use your index finger on top of your checkering file(for more control) while filing in jimping. It will jimp your finger, like it did mine last night. :/ :D

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Rhinoknives1 said:
I’ve used Carbide burrs for jimping on 58-62 hardened steel... you do need a $200.00 plus Foredom flex shaft on the other end of the Carbide burr! I suggest just buying a knife that has the features you want! The Jimping game takes awhile to get good at!;)
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I don’t know about all that. I’ve used a carbide burr on my Dremel many times on hardened knives. It works fine. Of course a Foredom Flex Shaft would work better in pretty much every instance compared to a Dremel. But for 1/8” jimping, a carbide burr works fine in a Dremel.
 
JG Custom Metal Works said:
On a related note. Don’t use your index finger on top of your checkering file(for more control) while filing in jimping. It will jimp your finger, like it did mine last night. :/ :D
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LOL, ouch. I once let one of my fingertips get rubbed back and forth along a DMT sharpening card -- I guess the way I was holding the knife gave me more control on a stubborn section of blade -- and unwittingly abraded off a layer or two of skin, not noticing until my fingertip felt raw -- so I kind of get where you're coming from.
 
edgecentricity said:
Not once have a come across a knife that ticks all the right boxes for me. There's always something that could be better -- different clip, better grind, more jimping, different handle, more refined lock, different size... I suppose it's a good -- or bad, depending on how you look at it -- thing that there are so many knives to choose from.

Thanks for the tip about the carbide burrs.
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I find the Burrs on EBay usually.......Have someone built you the perfect knife or make your own ;)
 
JG if you rotate your finger about 60 degrees, you'll have a nice checker pattern...
My phone (pixel 2) has a finger print reader and after every weekend working on blades, it takes until Wednesday or Thursday for it to recognize me. Quite annoying actually.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
You can't spot soften an air-hardening steel.
Quite simply- you will ruin a checkering file on hardened knife steel.
The Pferd files are probably industrial hard chromed to have that hardness. Regardless they will wear quickly on hard steel.
Do your checkering before hardening.
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Most likely ! I thought same when I received them .They are very good file anyway .I wonder can I do same on ordinary file ...to hard chrome new good one file ?
 
If I were going to do this I'd do it in the mill with the head tilted 45 degrees and a carbide endmill.

Thanks for the link to that checkering file. That's a good price.
 
A checkering file will most certainly not work. You might put a couple of scratches on the spine before the file becomes mostly unusable. I made the mistake of just trying to clean some scale out of the jimping on one of my knives after heat treat, and I could notice dulling of my file just from that.

Your best bet would be some small diameter carbide burs. You can get down to 1/16" heads on them, though you have to be very careful and use a light touch. You'll probably go through a couple of them before you finish. A dremel could do the job, or a decent drill press set at the very highest speed may give you a little better control, especially if you have an x-y table. Let the bur do the cutting and don't force it.

You might want to get a good diamond triangle file to make "pilot" marks for the round bur to start cutting in.
 
knife to a gunfight said:
Anybody know what the TPI on 0, 00, 1 and 2 is?
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Yeah I tried to find out. The numbers should be how aggressive the file cuts, not TPI. Dicks website doesn't say either. The guy I got in the chat window at Rio said to call and the would pull one and count the teeth.
 
I read that for Grobet it is
00 14 teeth per inch
0 51 teeth per inch
2 79 teeth per inch
4 117 teeth per inch

I got the 00 from amazon ($37) and it works well.
 
The number of the cut refers to how coarse or fine the cut is, not the number of lines per inch in the checkering.

I think everyone realizes that but just want to be clear.
 
Yes, they offer them with various numbers of lines per inch in the checkering (the least I could locate is 20), but also in different coarseness.
Mine is 20 lines per inch, with 00 coarseness making those lines.

I did read that "German cuts start coarser than Swiss and go finer, offering more increments for more precise cutting. In all cut styles, the higher the number, the finer its cut."
So the numbers above probably aren't correct for the Friedrich Dick German files.
 
J. Doyle said:
The number of the cut refers to how coarse or fine the cut is, not the number of lines per inch in the checkering.

I think everyone realizes that but just want to be clear.
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Well that's what I thought too except Grobets website gives a different TPI for each # cut like Richard338 posted. I've found them for the same price as the Dick so I'm just going to buy them. I don't really care what the TPI is I just don't want to double up on the TPI I already have.
 
It would make sense if a 40 or 50 LPI file made a finer (more TPI) cut than a 20 or 30 LPI file.

That's probably why they list them that way??
 
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