Fitting Brass Bolsters on Stick Tang Knives....What Am I Doing Wrong Here?

I've got something quite similar, kutzall carbide wood rasp, Lee Valley used to sell them. Mine is just about toast though. I'll have to try and find another one.

The burrs with that sort of teeth in a dremel or flex shaft make quick work of removing wood as well
 
That's probably exactly the same thing. Plasma deposited carbide.
 
It looks identical, unfortunately they stopped selling them though, so I'll have to look for another source
 
I have never used the carbide files (that's guys for finding somthing else for me to buy) but I have worked quite a bit with diamond needle files. Thy are designed to remove very fine amounts of material on hardened steel. Used them a lot in the machine shop to clean up areas after heat treat. I personally would not use the for slotting a guard as thy would be way to slow and at least in my experance can clog up when used on soft metals.
 
Carbide files and diamond files are about as far apart as you can get. Diamond files are generally used as you would stones. Carbide files are closer to a wood rasp on steroids. I haven't used them on steel, but they are great for super hard woods
 
Thanks, Geoff, I saw that as soon as I checked out McMaster!
Most of em are 24-80 grit, but they do have carbide needle files in a 280. Pretty spendy, though, you can get a diamond set from Grizzly for the price of one carbide needle file. Might be worth it, who knows?
 
I think it depends what you want to do. If you want to shape really hard handle materials or things that clog files (you can burn the crap out of these with a propane torch without hurting them) the carbide ones are hard to beat. I used my now worn out one for lignum vitae a fair bit. They last an incredibly long time compared to a wood rasp, and leave a far better finish for the rate of stock removal.

Diamond files I basically just use for very minor touchups on hardened steel, painfully slow for anything else.

Both can be useful, but I use regular files 10x more than both put together
 
Erin Burke said:
Everybody's processes are a bit different I guess, but I think that you'll be disappointed with the performance of diamond needle files for this type of work. I prefer standard single-cut files just small enough to fit where they need to fit and do what they need to do.
Erin
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Yep. Needle files came in the mail today. So far I'm not particularly impressed with them. I thought that having the ability to cut going back and forth would be nicer than using a toothed file and only being able to cut on the forward stroke but the diamond files definitely don't seem to cut very well, and that's comparing to my cheap Eurotool double-cut needle files.
 
elementfe said:
I've got some inexpensive diamond coated files from Grizzly- how do these compare with the carbide files?
And thanks for the suggestion, got to try these!
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Geoff pretty much answered your question, I just wanted to add McMaster does carry coarser, heavier duty diamond files, but they are expensive, over 50 bucks each. I have one from a previous job and it's handy on very hard materials but I wouldn't recommend buying one for anything particular in knife making.
 
Files come in many sizes and shapes. Most of the time when someone is breaking a file, or getting uneven slots, he is using the wrong size or shape.

A small pillar file is the tool for slotting. An equaling file will also work well. A pillar file has parallel sides and one safe edge. A 1/2" wide flat file can work, too

The other thing is using the wrong cut., The cuts go from #OO to #6. OO is a very aggressive cut.

For slotting brass, a number OO or O equaling or pillar file will work great. Do the last clean-up and fitting with a #1.

Cheap sets of needle files are usually a waste of money. One good needle file costs what a set of the cheap Chinese files on Ebay cost. I like Valtitan.
 
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