Thread: Hardening process

Thanks Paul,

Must read this, would be a dream come true for a lot of us if we could get decent quality affordable saw files.

Cheers Matt,

I've had some chinese files. Never a good saw file, but some of the files that I've gotten have been very hard.

the steel they talk about in that listing (referencing it) is a 1.2% carbon very plain tool steel. High hardening potential, and they talk about intentionally leaving carbides free and large rather than trying to compact the grain structure and minimize the free carbides above the eutectoid limit. Sounds good so far...

...the catch is that the teeth on chinese files are never formed very good or sharp if they are machine made, at least not the ones I've gotten. Large double cut files to file non-ferrous metals or wood, no problem. Small double cut files that need to be super hard and not file much, no problem. Single cut files intended to sharpen saws, big problem.

The steel that they're using is very similar to classic US and european tool steel. It's not temperature tolerant, but that shouldn't matter much. It's plain and can be made much harder than 60 hardness. Poor man's version of Japanese white #2.