File knives, love them or hate them?

J

JackPlane

Joined
Mar 25, 2022
Messages
14
I would like y'all to put your two cents in this tread about making knives from old USA made files.
 
Yes, get knownn steel, but file knives are cool!
They are charming and good up-cycling
 
I get most of my steel from AKS. They are great.
 
JackPlane said:
I would like y'all to put your two cents in this tread about making knives from old USA made files.
Click to expand...
If you have belt grinder you can make nice knives from old files. Cut file in shape you want , temper twice on 200 Celsius and grind bevels. Then test edge and if it is still to hard temper it again on higher temp .When you cut shape of knife break piece of leftover to see grain inside ......
Funny you start this thread , today I buy 16 old file for 10 $ .Most are West Germany made .I buy another 20 for 10$ but i can not take them with me because I was with bicycle .I will take them next Saturday :)
Tonight I started working on one file 6mm thick. The plan is a small Tanto knife, it's time to try it .First I grind file on my surface grinder and now it is 5mm .I break one piece from leftover and I don t think that we can get more fine grain than that if we HT in home ,sorry for bad picture but grain are extremely fine ! Who cares which is exactly the steel in question ? I guess the Germans know what a good file is made of 🤣
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I will temper it after I grind bevels because if I make some mistake while grinding bevels and I destroy the blank I didn't lose 2 x two hours in tempering oven for nothing;)
 
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I like to use files for knives. I usually forge them , but I want to make one with grinding and to leave the teeth on the unbeveled parts. They are stress risers but it will be for personal use.

I like to use files, because they get nice hamon. They cut well and are easy to sharpen. They are usually W2 (in my case U10 or U12)

I also want to try some water quenching on a file knife.

People here say - get known steel and I absolutely agree, but still I think that files are good source of steel.
 
first two knives I made were made from files, with files.
 
First knife I made was from an old file in Jr. High shop class. Most kids were making spot welder sheet metal art. The teacher liked that I wanted to do something different. He had a big drawer full of old files. He showed me how to anneal it, then I ground a double edged blade on a stone bench grinder and drilled holes for the handle. Then we hardened and tempered it.
The blade wasn't bad, but I used some crappy wood for the handle. I wish I still had it!
 
If you are doing them in a way that perserves the texture and are going for a rustic look they can be cool as heck. If you are just trying to find something that you can make a knife out of then I think it's a big waste of time. For many coming into making a knife for the first time they are trying to just find ways to find something that will make a good blade or it might seem like its simpler if they could skip the step of hardening the blade. I think it can sometimes be hard for them to translate the advice that they get from more experienced makers since that is often given from experience and handed out in somewhat blanket generalized statements from a perspective that may be hard to understand. I don't know what your background or equipment availability is so I will try to help a bit with an introduction and you may be aware of some of it or not.

This forum is a great resource into the world of knife making and some of the guys here produce the best blade money can buy. Like a lot of things there are different areas that people focus on and with it comes a lot of perspectives. The highest performance blades are purposes built out of high end steels with meticulous heat treatment. Blade steels are easy to get and considering the work that goes into a really good knife are only a small part of the cost. My favorite place fir anything knife making is Pop's knife supply although steels are not their primary market. AKS and NJ Steel Baron are the 2 big steel suppliers with AKS having the best selection. It's going to be far easier to work on a blade if the steel is not hardened first. Much if the advice for beginners is to use a steel like 1084 but keep in mind that advice is based on someone who is going to try to harden the steel themselves in some sort of forge. Heat treatment is the most complex part of knife making and tight controls are needed to produce a really good knife so people often get a mixed message because they will also be told to send it out for heat treatment. If you are sending it out there is no real reason to pick a simple steel and you actually will probably be better off using stainless or other air hardened steel since unless you are going to try for the ultra thin edges that the top makes use its possible to make the blade ground to final dimensions and hand sanded while soft and still be fine for heat treatment. An oil quenched blade has to be left thicker to prevent warping during the quench. If your time is worth anything at all to you this is the best way to start off. You should be able to buy a piece of steel that will produce a fantastic knife for $20 and then drill and shape it while soft and then send it out and have it heat treated fo $20. If you do your part, files and sandpaper will get you about as good of knife as money can buy out of ultra high performance steels that have whatever properties that are moving you to make a knife. If you have more equipment some parts might even be easier. If you just want to make something sharp out of something that you found there is nothing wrong with that. To make a knife out of a file you are hoping that it is not a case hardened file and that the steel is able to be through hardened. If you rwad some older knife making books they might say that you are hoping for the file being W1 really it is hard to know exactly what it is and different companies could use similar but different steels to make a file out of. This is a very simple and inexpensive type of steel. You can temper it to bring it into the hardness that you would use to make a blade but since you do not know what the steel is or the initial heat treatment you have no control over how it will perform and you are going to take what you can get. If you go this way then you have to shape it while hard without overheating it. If you have a good grinder thats not that hard but then you are also stuck with drilling holes through hardened steel and you will need carbide bits. The other way is to anneale it but then you have to harden it. Unless you have a lot of files to work up a perfect heat treatment you are guessing. While it might seem like a file would be really good steel since it cuts steel it has really just been left at near max hardness and ia nothing special and is easily outperformed by most blade specific steels and since you don't know exactly what it is for heat treatment will at best likely only match 1095 which is basically the very cheapest blade steel available. W1 actually falls into the 1095 classification and is just a slightly tighter category. Depending on what equipment you have and how you want to make the knife what you end up with is a lot of extra hours, work and belts for a knife that at best will perform as well as the cheapest simple steel that you can buy and that will likely be more work and cost more in the end. However not all knives are built for performance. Most forged knives cant keep up with the stock removal high alloy powder metal steels that are available. However people might want to be able to achieve a special look or they might enjoy the process or have a reason why they wanted to use specific materials. There is nothing wrong with that and I would love to have knives made by others made in ways that I have no interest in myself. Personally I don't think files or rasp make that great blades and prefer high alloy steels myself. However someday if I had the time and my bad shoulder would hold up I would love to take a smithing class and could see myself using a horseshoe rasp to make some sort of cool rustic blade. Since it would go on the wall probably I wouldn't have to worry about getting it perfect. I also find all of my first 1084 forged hardened knives embarrassing and think they don't hold an edge. But at the time and for the people I gave them to they seemed pretty good compared to other knives that I had bought. Expectations and what one wants to achieve and how they value time and money all come into play. You can check the stickys for more info and the shop thread to see what others are doing. Enjoy your journey. It's long and expensive.
 
Storm W said:
If you are doing them in a way that perserves the texture and are going for a rustic look they can be cool as heck. If you are just trying to find something that you can make a knife out of then I think it's a big waste of time. For many coming into making a knife for the first time they are trying to just find ways to find something that will make a good blade or it might seem like its simpler if they could skip the step of hardening the blade. I think it can sometimes be hard for them to translate the advice that they get from more experienced makers since that is often given from experience and handed out in somewhat blanket generalized statements from a perspective that may be hard to understand. I don't know what your background or equipment availability is so I will try to help a bit with an introduction and you may be aware of some of it or not.

This forum is a great resource into the world of knife making and some of the guys here produce the best blade money can buy. Like a lot of things there are different areas that people focus on and with it comes a lot of perspectives. The highest performance blades are purposes built out of high end steels with meticulous heat treatment. Blade steels are easy to get and considering the work that goes into a really good knife are only a small part of the cost. My favorite place fir anything knife making is Pop's knife supply although steels are not their primary market. AKS and NJ Steel Baron are the 2 big steel suppliers with AKS having the best selection. It's going to be far easier to work on a blade if the steel is not hardened first. Much if the advice for beginners is to use a steel like 1084 but keep in mind that advice is based on someone who is going to try to harden the steel themselves in some sort of forge. Heat treatment is the most complex part of knife making and tight controls are needed to produce a really good knife so people often get a mixed message because they will also be told to send it out for heat treatment. If you are sending it out there is no real reason to pick a simple steel and you actually will probably be better off using stainless or other air hardened steel since unless you are going to try for the ultra thin edges that the top makes use its possible to make the blade ground to final dimensions and hand sanded while soft and still be fine for heat treatment. An oil quenched blade has to be left thicker to prevent warping during the quench. If your time is worth anything at all to you this is the best way to start off. You should be able to buy a piece of steel that will produce a fantastic knife for $20 and then drill and shape it while soft and then send it out and have it heat treated fo $20. If you do your part, files and sandpaper will get you about as good of knife as money can buy out of ultra high performance steels that have whatever properties that are moving you to make a knife. If you have more equipment some parts might even be easier. If you just want to make something sharp out of something that you found there is nothing wrong with that. To make a knife out of a file you are hoping that it is not a case hardened file and that the steel is able to be through hardened. If you rwad some older knife making books they might say that you are hoping for the file being W1 really it is hard to know exactly what it is and different companies could use similar but different steels to make a file out of. This is a very simple and inexpensive type of steel. You can temper it to bring it into the hardness that you would use to make a blade but since you do not know what the steel is or the initial heat treatment you have no control over how it will perform and you are going to take what you can get. If you go this way then you have to shape it while hard without overheating it. If you have a good grinder thats not that hard but then you are also stuck with drilling holes through hardened steel and you will need carbide bits. The other way is to anneale it but then you have to harden it. Unless you have a lot of files to work up a perfect heat treatment you are guessing. While it might seem like a file would be really good steel since it cuts steel it has really just been left at near max hardness and ia nothing special and is easily outperformed by most blade specific steels and since you don't know exactly what it is for heat treatment will at best likely only match 1095 which is basically the very cheapest blade steel available. W1 actually falls into the 1095 classification and is just a slightly tighter category. Depending on what equipment you have and how you want to make the knife what you end up with is a lot of extra hours, work and belts for a knife that at best will perform as well as the cheapest simple steel that you can buy and that will likely be more work and cost more in the end. However not all knives are built for performance. Most forged knives cant keep up with the stock removal high alloy powder metal steels that are available. However people might want to be able to achieve a special look or they might enjoy the process or have a reason why they wanted to use specific materials. There is nothing wrong with that and I would love to have knives made by others made in ways that I have no interest in myself. Personally I don't think files or rasp make that great blades and prefer high alloy steels myself. However someday if I had the time and my bad shoulder would hold up I would love to take a smithing class and could see myself using a horseshoe rasp to make some sort of cool rustic blade. Since it would go on the wall probably I wouldn't have to worry about getting it perfect. I also find all of my first 1084 forged hardened knives embarrassing and think they don't hold an edge. But at the time and for the people I gave them to they seemed pretty good compared to other knives that I had bought. Expectations and what one wants to achieve and how they value time and money all come into play. You can check the stickys for more info and the shop thread to see what others are doing. Enjoy your journey. It's long and expensive.
Click to expand...
This has probably been the longest forum post I have ever read. I am using 2 old Nicholson USA files as a source of steel for my first 2 kives. I am going to be forging and heat-treating them myself. I know they are high carbon but I really don't plan on these being excellent knives. I am really just indenting on this to be an opportunity to practice so I don't ruin the O1 I bought.
 
JackPlane said:
This has probably been the longest forum post I have ever read. I am using 2 old Nicholson USA files as a source of steel for my first 2 kives. I am going to be forging and heat-treating them myself. I know they are high carbon but I really don't plan on these being excellent knives. I am really just indenting on this to be an opportunity to practice so I don't ruin the O1 I bought.
Click to expand...
I have been laid up and bired out of my mind and trying to get back in the shop. Just keeping my mind busy. 😆 I see people get all sorts of different answers and try to figure out where to go with them. Now you git them all and can move on with whatever you want to do. The only thing that matters is you are doing what you want. I got a file with a guard that I tried to weld on with Inconel. If I had only known my options i would have started making knives years earlier.

You want to see a long post check out the one I just did about sharpening. I kinda have some feelings about that. I need to get back on my feet or start drinking or something. For a guy that hates texting a cell phones i guess my thumbs work better than I realized.

Good luck. It will be interesting to see what you whip up
 
I love making file knives! As long as you keep your hammer blows light, you can keep a lot of texture cold shut into the steel and still shape your blade and set your bevels. Obviously grinding still takes some of the texture away, which is a good thing near the edge.

Here is a file knife I just finished. the handle is made of old Irish Blackthorn and two stabilized pieces of leather
IOPzxll.jpg
 
I started out making knives from files and saw blades then eventually switch over to to modern tool steels. Just starting out files can be a decent medium to work in, and they're dirt cheap easy to find, and make a decent usable knife. But I eventually started looking for higher performance in my blades and switched to the modern high alloy tool steels, and I never looked back at files or saw blades again.
 
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