File guide/ grain refinement test

J

JustAFleshWound

Joined
Jan 10, 2012
Messages
741
Hello folks,
Today I got my shipment of 1084 from Aldo, so needless to say I started making stuff. ;) First up was a file guide, I have no pictures from the making so I will attempt to use my rather poor writing to explain what I did. First, I sawed out two roughly 1/2" x 3" rectangles.

After that, I glued the two pieces front to back with liquid nails, why liquid nails you ask? Because it was what I had on hand, and it is easily dissolved in WD-40. I then filed, filed, and filed some more until they were even. After that I drilled a #21 hole 1/4" from each end in one of the pieces and #6 holes in the other.

I then tapped the #21 holes with a 10-42 tap, and countersunk the #6 holes. After cleaning the glue off I heated them to critical and dunked them in Mcmaster-Carr 11 second oil.

Here is where I made my first mistake... I decided that since I was going to be filing up against it that it should be left at full hard. :hopelessness:

Here it is before....
IMG_1303.jpg

IMG_1299.jpg


...and after I decided to do an impromptu grain refinement test. (that's my story and I'm sticking to it)
IMG_1304.jpg

IMG_1306.jpg


All that is to say... when you make a file guide, TEMPER IT!


Thanks for looking, I apologize for my bland writing and poor grammar and punctuation.
 
Hard to tell from the blurry pic, but if that's Aldo's 1084, you overheated it. Grain should be finer than that.
 
The grain isn't guite as large in real life as it appears in the photo, but I am thinking that is a good possibility. My pictures are normally better, I have no idea why these are so bad. :confused:
 
You have found the trap of knowing just a little bit of metallurgy. The hardening is only part of the process. You have to finish the process to make it usable. A temper at a low setting, say 300F, would have left that file guide hard, but able to take stress. I would probably have used 350F.
 
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