What do you do with your worn out, dull files?

PIndelicato

PIndelicato

Joined
Sep 16, 2002
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What do you do with the worn out files that accumulate on your bench and generally get in the way?

-Make knives from them (this idea seems to have mixed reviews)

-Get them resharpened (is this cost effective factoring in shipping, etc.?)

-Sell them to a pawn shop or donate them to Goodwill

-???
 
Well the obvious suggestion is to make knives from them but I use them for heat treating experiments and demonstrations. The grain of a freshly broken file is an excellent guideline for what the grain of our blades made from simple steels should look like afer heat treating. Don Fogg did a demonstraiton on how thermal cycling refines the grain with a file at a demo once that has had a lasting impression on me to this day. Start by breaking an old file near the end and examine the grain, then way overheat the file and quench it, then break it near the end again to see or to exhibit the coarse grain that looks like rock salt. Then run that same file through three normalizing heats watching for decalsecense on heating and recalescense on cooling to arrow in on the color of the steel at this point in the lighting conditions you are working in and then using that reference point to heat it again do another quench at the proper temperature and break the file again near the end. If everything went well, you should be right back to a grain similar to what the file had when you first broke it.
 
Hello Guy,

That's a good suggestion. I did some of that in a recent lesson with Tai Goo, and it's a good idea to do it again on my own to reinforce what I learned there.
 
I make knives with them.
Good files are made of W1 or W2 steel, and you can get very good knives out of them.
You must steer well clear of the cheap chinese crap, though. Most of those are case hardened iron and won't hold an edge.

W1 and W2 is good for thick blades that must hold an edge and don't need to flex. Even tempered to blue it won't be on par with steels like 5160 or 1075 as it comes to flex. There's just too much carbon.
Plus, hypereuctectoid steels may be a bitch to heat treat in a simple coal forge like mine.
 
This is what I do with my Nicholson files. Experiment and play time
 

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Interesting knife.
It seems a mixture between a knife, a golf put and some naval implement.
What's the brass like band within the steel? Didi you make it for decoration purposes or did you braze two pieces together?
Seems damn good to spread peanut butter or nugat! :D
 
There's always the option of just throwing them at stuff. :)

[youtube]CXFGEUx9jFY[/youtube]
 
LOL I took the file and did a twist in it. I looked at it a while then cut the end of the twist of square, stuck a piece of 3/8 all thread in the center of the twisted part and brazed it in and filled the gaps with braze. did a torch and edge quench harden. I actually like it a lot. Your hand is up out of what your cutting. Just a fun experiment and some knowledge in the back of my head.
 
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