some might think this a silly ?

S

sctt reynolds

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Jun 29, 2008
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I am making a fillet knife out of 1.5mm industrial hacksaw blade and need to know how to drill holes in the tang to fit the handle.my house hold drills wont even mark it. I have no special equipment and was wondering if someone could tell me what to do thank heaps scott:confused:
 
I've never done this, but read about it.
The steel is hardened. Try and anneal just the spot to be drilled with a miniature torch.
You can also buy a carbide dril, but they are expensive and fragile
 
Scott, use carbide drills, I have a couple extra if you need 'em. I'm a machinist so I get 'em at no cost (I use old carbide cutters and make drills out of 'em) PM me and I'll ship this week.
-Michael
 
I used to grind pin holes in the handles of hacksaw blades with a Dremmel and changed to carbide bits.
 
I watched a guy solve exactly this problem in a way I didn't believe would work.

He took the blade, and laid it flat on the end-grain of a piece of firewood. Then he took a nail-set out of his shirt pocket and said "watch this." So he hit it with a hammer and it punched right through. Flipped it over and punched back through it from the other side, and bang, there's the hole, clean and round.
 
MSCantrell said:
I watched a guy solve exactly this problem in a way I didn't believe would work.

He took the blade, and laid it flat on the end-grain of a piece of firewood. Then he took a nail-set out of his shirt pocket and said "watch this." So he hit it with a hammer and it punched right through. Flipped it over and punched back through it from the other side, and bang, there's the hole, clean and round.
Click to expand...

I would have never thunk,,, but I can see how a flat end nail set would 'snap' through a piece of hardened steel, where a centerpunch will try to 'swedge' out from a point causing a break. I may have to try that sometime just for kicks and grins...
 
my favorite drill bits are the dewalt tit nitride bits. I know I know, carbide is the way to go, but on my last knife I spent $60 bucks on like 4 bits and one of them cracked in half (vertical ways) after one hole being used. Went back to my dewalt bits and I was good to go.

-John
 
I don't think anything but carbide or abrasive will drill one of those power hacksaw blades, They are HARD. Now here is one I read but have not tried, Should work/ Drill a hole the size you want in a small piece of hard wood. Clamp the hardwood on the blade with the hole lined up. Fill the hole with valve grinding compound and then use the correct diameter brass rod in a drill and and work press it against the blade, work it up and down to reload the brass with compound. Slow, but, should be effective
 
Try to spot anneal in the areas where you need to drill the holes.
Any blowtorch, smaller tip, get the spot to red color and slowly retreat the
flame's tip. Just might get lucky :)
 
ib2v4u said:
I don't think anything but carbide or abrasive will drill one of those power hacksaw blades, They are HARD. Now here is one I read but have not tried, Should work/ Drill a hole the size you want in a small piece of hard wood. Clamp the hardwood on the blade with the hole lined up. Fill the hole with valve grinding compound and then use the correct diameter brass rod in a drill and and work press it against the blade, work it up and down to reload the brass with compound. Slow, but, should be effective
Click to expand...


Interesting!
Off subject: It is likely that the ancient Egyptians used a simular technique to cut granite. A mystery that wasn't solved for decades; how did they cut it without powertools? (some actualy sugested aliens)
They used copper saws withouth teeth and sand. The lose sand got inbedded in the copper and did the cutting, like the grinding compound sugested by ib2v4u
 
rashid11 said:
Try to spot anneal in the areas where you need to drill the holes.
Any blowtorch, smaller tip, get the spot to red color and slowly retreat the
flame's tip. Just might get lucky :)
Click to expand...

Don't think it will work with a power hacksaw blade. Stuff is air hardening and very high temp. I have made a couple knives out of it and even after it is heated redhot and cooled it is still very hard. To anneal it I think you have to get it hot ( over 1500f) and keep it that way for a good while then cool at a rate of 10 or 20 degrees an hour. I have a bunch of it out in the shop I and can get more. I am going to try the punch trick. Nail set punch, hard wood and a hammer. I will post back.
 
I use a dremel with a carbide burr but have also used a drill press and a wooden dowell to reduce the hardness and drilled it with a cobalt drill bit. Simply chuck up a dowell and burn it into the steel until it smokes. Do it s couple times, let it cool and drill it. It wont work on Stainless because of air hardening but simple carbon steel like this it will soften that spot several hardness points enough to drill.
 
I finaly got the holes drilled by getting the area red hot and drilling will still red took awhile but got there in the end ( i used a normal every day drill bit in a hand held drill )
 
That is the one technique I havent tried, drilling while hot. I tried to punch a hole with a flat end punch, and ended up with about 12 pieces of blade. So far the dremel grinding bit chucked in the drill press just makes a shorter grinding bit. The spot annealing would be tough if the blade is high speed steel. The whole idea is for it to still cut when at a red heat. The austenizing temperature is frequently above 2000 F depending on the grade, and the tempering temperature can be over 1000 F. I'll have to keep up with this thread, since I have 2 blades that I havent been able to get a hole in yet. One is nearly 2' long and 1/8" thick. Not looking forward to that one. I see stick tangs and a router in my future.
 
I would stick it in a pail of water with the tang part sticking out and blow small holes with a torch your epoxy that you use will fill in any voids around your pins.
 
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