My plunge into the abyss begins

U

USCG_Cannon_Cocker

Joined
Nov 24, 2012
Messages
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Well, went to the swap meet at lunch time. I found one good file to practice on for $1.64 with tax. Lucky for me a 10ft round Oak Tree fell apart at work and the rest of it still hasn't been scavenged by some of the people at the unit. Came home, made a fire. Force air with the exhaust side of my small shop vac. Voila! Nice orange file. It's cooling off in a nice pile of sand. The cut and grind start tomorrow. I hope I did all of that right. :o

Crossing my fingers hoping it's a good enough steel to take and keep an edge. We shall see. If nothing else, I have a cheap piece of steel to practice on rather than waste the O1 blank I have that's on it's way.

Any words of wisdom as I begin my first endeavor into knife making?

ETA: It was a Simonds file that I bought. Good to go?
 
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STOP NOW! You are going to cut yourself and burn yourself. You will spend countless hours on the internet surfing for bars of steel and chunks of wood. You will quickly learn that a heroin habit is cheaper than knife making. It will get so bad that if you finally get out of the shop and go out to dinner, you will just look at the steak knife the waitress gave you and think "what a piece of crap."

Now, on the other hand, if you choose to ignore all of this, you will be a member of the knife making community. It is a bit of an odd community that the rest of the world does not really understand but basically it is composed of hard-working, salt of the earth people who will go out of their way to help you to help yourself. I am proud to be a member of this group and you will be too.

BTW, you do realize you are already hooked, don't you?

Welcome.
 
Oh, I'm fully aware that I'm hooked. I'm a huge gun nut and after getting the diseases associated with that, I have moved on. I was hoping to sort of keep this as a this is how my build is going type of thread and when I have issues, I can come in here and post. Just figured y'all could relive your noob days vicariously through me.

Now, as to when I annealed the file, I did not end up getting the spike/handle portion of the file orange/red. Is that going to be an issue?
 
OK, so I just went back to my file. I got myself into trouble. I buried it in some sand to cool down slowly. Well, unbeknownst to me. It started to rain while I sat in here. The file warped. Luckily, it only warped in one direction so it has a slight u shape to it. Fortunately, it's given me enough workable material that is flat. I'll lose half the file but that's why I bought a $1.50 file, something to learn on. Hopefully it cooled correctly and did not harden in the moist sand. :barf:
 
The Tang of a file is never hardened so there should be no need to anneal that portion. You can probably straighten your file cold since it is softened now, as long as you normalize before heat treating. Or make like a blacksmith and heat up your file again to straighten it. No need to cut it in half.
 
Depending on how large of a warp it is, you could run it for a temper cycle then bend it back to shape.

if it's literally a "U" shape, then you can either forge it back to shape, or grind it in half.
I don't have any experience in forging, so I can't suggest any specific solutions in that field.
 
OK, I was fortunate enough to have a portion to work with right away. I will run a temper cycle to straighten the other half of the file. I wanted two sections anyhow. I have not cut more than I needed to so there is hope after all. I'll get pics up soon.

ETA: The warp is only about 1/4 of an inch end to end. I should be able to bend it back easily.

ETA 2: PICS

almostthere.jpg
Gettin' there! Man, I need some cutting oil. That poor mini hack saw.


First Cut!

firstcut.jpg


Please excuse the mess.
 
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