Thread
:
Always check those rasp and files
View Single Post
#
1
08-15-2015, 03:37 PM
jmccustomknives
Skilled
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Alabama
Posts: 554
Always check those rasp and files
Recently a friend came back from a trip with a bunch of old files for me.
So as a thank you I was going to take the most interesting one and forge a blade from it. It was a thick wood rasp made by Nicholson. I cut the tang off (for use as the pommel) and forged out the blade. When I had the blade roughed in I heated to nonmagnetic and quenched in Parks 50. Since I wasn't positive about the steel I checked with a file, the file cut. So I went back, normalized and did the heat treat again changing quenchants. The file still cut. So I did what I should have done in the first place. Heated the tang of the file and quenched. It bent. I'd saved myself a lot of trouble by doing this, or I'd embarrassed myself as a knifemaker by giving it to some one as a cutting tool.
I'm sharing this as a reminder to always check those rasp and files before wasting your time on junk even if you think it's "good" steel.
jmccustomknives
View Public Profile
Visit jmccustomknives's homepage!
Find all posts by jmccustomknives