Always check those rasp and files

[jmccustomknives]

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.