Question on making knife from file.

[Charles Dean]

A friend gave me an old worn out file for me to use as knife steel. My question is instead of me annealling and grinding away the rough spots, could I just forge fold the thing until it looked like regular barstock? Thanks for the help.

 

[Bruce Evans]

Yes you can forge it into a flat bar.You might cosider a couple of normalizing heats before you start forging,as I have seen some files just crumble under the hammer when heated to forging temp while still hard.
You might also consider fluxing it and welding the teeth back down so they don't make shuts for you.I always just forge mine after normalizing and then I leave it a little thicker than normal so I grind the teeth off where I don't want them to show.
Hope this helps,
Bruce

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Bruce Evans Handcrafted Knives
The soul of the Knife begins in the Fire!!!!!
Member of,AKTI#A000223 and The American Bladesmith Society