File knife questions

[Tkendrick]

Still workin on it. It's one of those little projects that gets worked in between the "real" projects I have going on.

Have the blade pretty well shaped, but Haven't even tried to heat treat it, since from what I'm reading here, I don't know how I'm going to get it hot enough to treat.

 

[bingo1952]

If your heat source was hot enough to anneal it it should be hot enough to harden it again. :hatsoff:

 

[LRB]

Bar-B-Que grill, charcoal, and a hair dryer. Do it in very dim light.

 

[Robert Egler]

I've used 3 MAPP gass tourches heating the blade at the same time in dim light to get the blade hot. Then I quenched in coll tap water. I really didn't know what I was doing at the start when I made my first (out of 5) file knives, but this worked very well to harden the steel again. Hard enough to work as a striker for flint and steel until I tempered the blades. I've learned here that this really isn't a particulaly good way to make a blade. One blade warped. One of the others I dropped and it broke into 3 peices when it hit the floor. I guess that one was a little too hard. :grin:
And then I got two good knives, and 1 so-so knife, the problem with that one being that I couldn't get the thing to really harden again. I think it was because it was a cheap steel.

 

[LRB]

You really don't need the grill. Just bank up on the ground with bricks.