Drilling out laser cut holes

Kevin Wilkins said:
I didn't hear it, it's based on my 20 years of experience making and selling knives. But hey, you're the expert, go ahead dulling your expensive carbide drill bits.
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I don’t see how running a complete anneal cycle on a blade is worth the time and money when a carbide burr worth a few bucks will ream it right to size and be good for a small truck load of blades.

like I said I spot mark with the plasma which makes a very tiny dimple. I then center punch to deepen it and the use a carbide drill to remove the hard spot. Then drill with standard drills. My carbide drill is just a short section of 1/8” carbide round that I ground a spade point on. I call them hole poppers as thy are about indestructible. Thy will open up a hardened hole to any size you want or spot drill out a hard spot. The 1/8” one I use the most is just about ready for a resharpen and it’s done probably 500 blades. I have a picture around here showing it. Let me dig it up. As to talking about experience, I cut/heat treat an average of 300 blades a month. Been making Knives for 26 or so years. A lot of those years where early days when I was quite young. But I have been in this game for a long time as well. One thing all this time has taught me is that time is money. I try and do things the most efficient way possible without compromising quality for my customers. You do bring up a good point. If the spots/holes could be softened using a sub critical anneal than I could load up the oven and go do something else for an hr or so.
 
If you shop around on ebay and other places you can find bags of used industrial grade reamers, regular and carbide. They use them for a bit and then chuck them in a box because they are out of tolerance or cutting slower. We generally don't care about a few thousandths on our holes, and we are reaming thin metal compared to industry, so the are great for us. I bought some bags of 30 assorted reamers ( 1/8" to 1/2") for about $1 a reamer.
 
Stacy the aerospace industry is like this. Thy use special carbide drills and reamers that have a threaded shank that screw into a tool. These can be found for crazy cheep on eBay.
 
Daniel Fairly Knives said:
I do the same prior to heat treat with my waterjet cut framelocks. How many blades are you getting per reamer? Sounds good after ht/double disc grinding.
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I honestly have no idea, I don't make enough of the same thing to give a quantifiable answer. I did a run of 25 little fixed blades that were 63RC A2, two holes each, and a number of other various knives, 3V, Elmax, some carbon, before I lost (as in misplaced) that .251 reamer.

For me it's purely about convenience. If I get 100 holes on a $25 Garr reamer I'm happy.

And FWIW I know what Stacy is saying about holding size not being critical for a glue together knife. I laser glue together knives oversize to begin with. I'm only hard reaming holes that are locating, whether it's pivots or removable scales.
 
I have thought about reaming all my holes after heat treat. Makes for a much nicer hole finish
 
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