Making a knife out of an old file?

[oldarmy]

I have a old 10" nickelson mill file and want to make a knife out of it. I hate to waste.
If I anneal it with a torch, can I then grind it to shape? or is there something else I would need to do first?
I was planing on puttin on an elk anlter handle.
I have a set of anlters saved from my fathers time in Idaho.

 

[gordy]

While in the Army back in the 50s,a friend and myself made several knives from files.Unless You are referring to cutting/welding torch,a propane torch will not hold the piece up to the propper heat.A forge is the best.The main thing in annealing files is to allow them to cool as slow as possible.We had an asbestos box that we cooled them in and it took a couplem of days to cool them.Because of the high carbon content its sometimes hard to retemper the shaped blade without it becomming brittle.When you do hit the right combination in drawing out the temper they make a tough knife that will hold an edge under hard use.

 

[john4645]

Do you have to do anything to it at all or just grind it and keep it cool? Files are already hard but are grindable are'nt they?

 

Heat it with a torch to cherry red or slightly higher and burry it in a bucket of sand intil cool,

do your drilling and grinding as needed.

To re=temper heat to cherry red and quench in motor oil or transmision fluid. Draw the hardness in a 500 degree oven for 3 hrs.

 

Here is my method:

First I anneal the file in a forge by heating to at least cherry red and letting cool slowly.
(You can just let it cool slowly in the coals of the forge)

Next I grind off all the serrations making sure to keep it cool.

I then forge it into a rough knife shape.

Finish shaping it on the grinding wheel.

Harden by heating to cherry red and quench in water.

Polish the cutting edge with a stone.

Heat the back of the blade over propane torch until the edge just turns light brown.

Quickly quench in water to set temper.

This should give you a hard edge and a soft spine adding strength to the knife.

Drill out your antler to fit the tang of your knife.

Set blade in place with epoxy or cutlers resin.

Let dry.

Drill through antler and tang and add a pin or two for extra strength.

Finish by doing final sharpening.

If you choose you can add a gaurd or spacer between handle and blade. You could use brass, copper, or steel.


Or plan B...

Grind file to proper shape being sure to keep it cool.

Temper by heating back of blade until edge turns light brown and quench quickly.

Set blade into desired handle.

Finish by doing final sharpening.

Hope this helps! Good Luck and Good Knife Making! :thumbsup:

 

[pondoro]

You guys have coonvinced me to try this. I have a bunch of old files. Question: I am considering firelockshooter's plan "B" because I only have a propane torch, not an acetylene torch. How hard is it to grind a hard file? No offense Ghost, you are one of my heros on this list, but firelockshooter's method works with the tools I've got.

Or - could I get the file cherry red with a propane torch and a brick oven?

For the record I plan to build a very small knife (about 2-1/2 inches long) to cut patches with.

 

I have gotten a very small 4 in blade knife (made from a small old file) cherry red over just a propane torch. It is fine for hardening but not good for forging.

A forge would be needed for heating larger pieces of steel.

Saw plans for a small forge in the Jan. issue of backwoodsman magazine.

It consisted of a short, fat can with holes drilled in the bottom (used as the firepot) it was propped up on some bricks leaving room for
draft.

Cinderblocks were used to make a 'U' shape around the firepot and a slab of some kind put across the extensions of the 'U' to create an air channel.

Use some sort of blower or bellows to force air down the channel.

Use REAL LUMP CHARCOAL to fire the forge NOT BRIQUETS!!!


I made my forge from an old BBQ Pit using instructions I found online.

I can say from experience that it gets hot, make that very hot. I once was forging a poker for the forge from 1/4 in. steel and I left it in too long and melted it in two! :shocked2:

Try this URL:
[url] http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/green51.html[/url]

 

Word of warning...

If the BBQ you choose dosn't have strong legs you may want to reinforce or make new legs from angle iron.

Trust me it really stinks when you want to go out and forge and the legs just fall off :redface: .

 

[J.D.]

I would suggest tempering the file prior to grinding. IT wil make grinding much easier.

Files are either 1095, W1, or W2, either way they should all temper at about the same temperature.

Clean the file VERY WELL, or you will be in big trouble with Mama. Put your file into the oven at 500 degrees, confirmed with an accurate oven thermometer, for an hour, or so. The temp controls on kitchen ovens are notoriously inacccurate. They can be off as much as 50-100 degrees, which will ruin a temper.

I prefer to leave the blade in the overn to cool, but others remove the blade blank and let it cool in the air.

The 500 degree temper should give you a hard knife edge. It might be a little brittle too, so if the edge chips in testing, chuck it back in the oven at 550 degrees for another hour. Test again, and if the blade chips a second time, throw it back in the oven and temper at 600 degrees for an hour.

The reason to start at a low temp is that W1 and W2 contain anywhere from .060-1.40 points of carbon, and 1095 can vary from .09-1.03 points of carbon. Since you don't know the carbon content, ya gotta start low and work your way up the tempering scale.

Grind the knife while holding it with your bare hands, so's you can feel when the blade begins to heat up. Dip the blade into cool water when it becomes uncomfortable to handle. Remember to DRY the blade and your hands to prevent scaulding your fingertips as the blade heats up again.

Be very careful that you don't slip and grind your fingertips off too. Been there and done that, and it ain't no fun.

Wear appropriate safety equipment when grinding, to include safety glasses and respirator. You don't want to inhale the steel dust. It will mess up your lungs, big time.
J.D.

 

[oldarmy]

that's great information. thanks
I don't have a forge, but a good friend has a welding torch.oxy/act that will heat it red hot.
He actualy has a beautiful hand made forge that was his grandfathers, with an oringinal anvil and all the tools that a blacksmith would need, his grandfather put on an electric blower for the air induction, I look at it every time I go over IT IS SITTING IN HIS BASEMENT
A bucket of sand is cheap.

 

Note of Warning: Many modern CHEAP imported files are only case hardened pieces of unknown steel/iron - if you have Nicholson or Black Diamond Brand you generally have 1095 for the steel.

While annealing is helpful if you don't have the equipment for it just draw the temper in your oven as described above and grind away - it will be more work as you grinding hardened steel but will work just fine. I know many pro knifemakers who forge thick and grind after hardening as it helps prevent cracking (thinner steel cools at a different rate than the thicker spine and PING!). Just be sure and keep it cool while grinding - if it turns blue you've ruined the temper in that section.

Or you can build a one brick oven that with propane or Mapp gas get it up to annealing heat just fine - they work great for small knives - I use one frequently for parts and small blades when I don't feel like heating up Dragon's Breath. You can use ashes, clay kitty litter, or vermiculite to slow cool it in. Do a web search for one brick forge and you should find the how to on various sites.

 

[pondoro]

I have an old Nicholson file in the oven right now. 500 degrees. I have a fairly modern electronically controlled oven and two analog oven thermometers in it. We will see if the oven and the two thermometers agree. Momma is at work. When the file comes out manicotti will go in. Then the grinding will start.

 

[pondoro]

Update -
Start ”“ set digital oven temp to “500” insert file, two analog oven thermometers and the probe from a digital thermometer that I use for my barbecue.

Oven “preheated” light comes on at about 375 degrees.

Digital thermometer peaks at 495. I set the oven up to 505 and the heating element comes back on. Temperature indicated by the digital thermometer reaches 523 and is still rising (no “preheated” light yet so I open the door, as I do not want to go too high. One analog thermometer says 475, the other says 480. I shut the oven door and the digital is dropping, eventually it gets as low as 475 then it comes back to 513 and sits there. I find I can open the door and sneak a quick peek at the two analog thermometers and the oven temp drops only about ten degrees.

So right now the oven thinks it is at 505, the digital thermometer thinks it is 513 and the two analogs think it is about 475. I cannot read the analog thermometers through the oven window because their glass faces are blackened from using them in the barbeque. I am sitting tight at a temperature which is about 500 degrees.

The digital thermometer cost $30 at a cooking store. My years of experience as an engineer who specializes in heat transfer and combustion tell me that temperature gauges costing far more than $30 can easily disagree much more than these three do. They are also in different parts of the oven. Temperature is never known exactly, unless water (or some other substance) is boiling or freezing, and even then the mixture is never perfectly uniform in temperature.

We will see how hard this guy is to grind!

 

[jdixon]

Another info. source. This month's and last month's issues of Muzzleblasts has an article (Part 1 last month, Part 2 this month) on making a knife from scratch. I have never done this but, the article complete with pictures, made sense to me when I read it.

 

[George F.]

Have any of you guys tries using Blueing salts with one of their thermometers from Brownells. I've used them on my lock parts with excellent results. They heat soak the patrs evenly when submersed in the nitrate salt bath. Also, I thought the blade has a varying temper in it from dark straw at the cutting edge to light blue at the spine. Is this correct? I've never built a knife and I've always wanted to do this but lack a forge since I live in an apartment. ....George F.

 

[rich pierce]

Files have a lot of carbon content. I've had to temper them further than I would have thought when using them for knives. The knife that snaps is useless, worse than one that needs sharpening a little more often. I used to be crazy for high hardness but that is a modern fad like magnum loads and takes a while to shake. I used to put 120 grains of FFFG in a .50 caliber shooting roundballs too. Over time I learned that deer don't seem to know whether I am shooting 80 grains or 120. Back to knives- I really like "agricultural steel". I have some old springs from sets of "drags", harrows, cornplanters, etc. that make great tools and knives. If you can find a scrapyard in or near an agricultural area, you can gets lots of steel from old farm implements cheap and plenty. Drive your wife wild bringing home junk. That's the downside.

 

[Bountyhunter]

Find a horseshoer. Hoof rasps are still good steel. Shoers go through a lot of rasps, and usually have barrels of worn out ones laying around that you can get cheap or free.

 

[pondoro]

When my dad died he left a basement and a garage full of tools. I couldn't throw them away. I have a bunch of files, some good, some just old. Tempering a file in the oven at 500F suprised me, I am an engineer (never worked much in heat treating) but I was suprised that temperatures this low would affect steel, I thought higher temps were needed. The file went in brown (slightly rusty). It came out brown-black with blue highlights. I remember an old rule about "blue = brittle" but I have no data or facts to back that up. I will probably not get around to grinding on it until the weekend.

Anyway if it works I might make some knives out of Dad's old files. Would be a nice use of his old stuff. He also left about 150 allen wrenches. I expect some of the bigger ones would make nice forging stock, if I even make a forge. I have two or three of some sizes.

 

[2172]

This thread has been about the most interesting to me of any in my several years on this forum. On my workbench,I have a file that I picked up in the street about 1964 or so...with the idea of making it into a knife...over the years I've almost ground down the teeth, roughly shaped it, and nave never gotten much further. I've printed off this whole thread...many thanks to y'all Hank

 

[ameling]

A few thoughts to add to this great discussion.

There is a lot of "emotion" attached to making a knife out of an old file - the "romance" of it, the recycling part, and all those old stories about knives made from files. Ditto all the other "found" steels - old agricultural parts, car/truck springs, jackhammer bits, etc. But all those old steels can have problems, when you try to use them for a knife that should be taken into consideration before you use them. First is that you really don't know what the steel is, and what other metal alloys are in them. All these will affect what you are trying to make, how it can be worked, and how you have to do the final heat treating. Next is the "past history" of the steel. Some of the alloys change over the years, some have variations in carbon and alloy content in different parts of the piece, and some retain an internal "memory" or history from its prior use (ie. the knife from a truck leaf spring that warps/reverts back to its original curve). But the worst problem is the internal stresses and cracks in the part that have developed over the years, and that you don't know about until after you put all that work into making your new knife. It's really frustrating when those hidden problems in used steel come back to bite you after you've put all that work into a knife. When they won't heat treat hard enough, or the crack/break/chip in the heat treat, or they warp and there's nothing you can do to correct it.

A proffesional knife maker gave me this advice many years ago, after several bad experiences he had. He put 40 some hours into making a knife from a rasp, and it would never heat treat hard. He also put 30-40 hours into one from a file that snapped during the final sanding/polishing. After that, he decided to just use new steel from the start. With new steel, you always know what you have to start with, and it doesn't have any past "history". In the end, the steel is the cheapest part of your knife - a couple bucks max. The rest is all your time invested. So he took that problem area out of it.

Now, I use a lot of new steel in my blacksmithing, but I still do use old steel. I just know that it might bite me in the rear. Most of the time it doesn't, but sometimes it does. I have about a dozen various fancy fire steels that just din't work out right. Some were that "unknown" steel, where part worked and other sections won't. Some I just grabbed low carbon steel by mistake. Some had internal cracks in them that only showed up in the final heat treat. Now they are just "display" pieces - unless I was to perhaps cache/bury them somewhere for some future archeological discovery. :winking:

So, just keep in mind that if you are making a knife from a file, that there can be some potential problems, and it may all end up as scrap and wasted time in the end. Then you just have to think of it as a "character building experience". Personally, I've had soo many "character building experiences" that I've become a "character". :grin:

Just some humble thoughts to add to this great discussion.

yhs
Mike Ameling