Thread: Converting spent files into chisels

Ian

As I think you know, I am a big fan of repurposing high carbon steel. You have done really well with the carving tools as I have always thought the chainsaw files a little slim for anything useful outside of scratch awls etc..

Thanks for posting.

Regards
Paul

Ian,

What was the timber used on the English pattern handles.

Cheers Matt.

Paul, I think we both get great satisfaction from minimising waste... I imagine you go through a few chainsaw files each year, now you know what to do with the dead ones.....

Something I meant to expand on is the hardening/tempering step. For a long time I was fearful of heat-treating steels, I made a few things from leaf springs (drawer knives, for e.g.), & scraps of O1 over the years, but the tools were a bit hit & miss in their edge-holding ability. What I've found with old files is that they seem to be really easy to re-harden, & very forgiving of my inexpert approach. They go glass-hard if quenched in water, and definitely need tempering after that, but using oil for quenching seems to be a lot gentler (warping is less of a problem), and the steel comes out 'ready for use' from the oil. It may be just a fortuitous result of the sizes I'm hardening & the temperature my "forge" can achieve, but it sure simplifies things. So if anyone wants to give chisel-making a go, old files make an excellent source of material to start with. It's a bit of a chore to get rid of the teeth, but once you do that you have a very good blank for a paring chisel.

And for folks who've not done any tool-making before, please don't use files without annealing them first. It's quite easy to do that, I usually chuck a couple of files in a good fire & leave them there 'til the ashes go cold. Paul uses his wood heater, which is excellent for the job, but not available in mid summer. An alternative method that works for me is to hold the file in front of a MAPP torch (using tongs, of course!) and heat it to cherry read a section at a time 'til the whole length has been heated, then leave it to cool. You'll know you've succeeded if you can file the teeth off easily with an ordinary file. If you have a linisher, of course you would use that to clean up the teeth, but filing is pretty quick too, once it's soft.

My next project is to learn how to fit nice bolsters like D.W. does, I had a bit of a go at it but I think I need a lot more heat than my primitive 'forge' can achieve, or maybe I will cheat & weld a blob on the tang, then grind & file that to a bolster-like shape. Bolsters aren't essential for paring chisels, of course, but it would enhance the look........

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Ian,

What was the timber used on the English pattern handles.

Cheers Matt.

Hi Matt - sorry, forgot to mention that. It's my new substitute for boxwood, from a tree called "Mallotus". common name 'kamala'. It's a small tree that grows about as far south as south coastal NSW, They grow along the creek at the back of our place and the birds eat the fruits & poop thge seeds all over the place so I have about 6 good specimens in the back yard. The chisel handles came from a small tree I had to remove a while back. I kept the wood 'cos it looked interesting, very fine-grained & milk-white. It turns like magic and ages quite like box (Buxus sp.). It's a bit softer than 'real' box, but still excellent for handles that won't get a lot of bashing.

Unfortunately, the tree never grows really large, so I doubt I'll ever get a chunk big enough for a saw handle or to infill a bench plane...

Cheers,

Ian

I think the files are suitable for these purposes because they have quite a high carbon content. Also, I think quenching of this type of steel is intended to be performed in oil rather than water, which is why you have had better results.

I always feel obliged to mention the caveat of using files for chisels. That is they are excellent for ordinary chisels, but folk should be wary of using them for turning chisels as the forces exerted on the lathe can cause them to fracture. This is because the teeth can create virtually invisible weakness below the surface even with the teeth ground off. No problem with everything you have made.

Regards
Paul

Paul, yairs, there we see plenty of warnings about using files for tools that may experience sudden, severe stress. It is very difficult to remove all traces of the teeth, the depths vary by a few thou, so you work away at the thing & think you have it all perfectly clean, but under strong light & with a bit of magnification you find remnants of the gullets scattered here & there. By that time I'm usually fed up with the job & just polish the thing & get on with it, telling myself I'll get back & finish it to perfection some rainy afternoon when I'm bored witless. I have many, many jobs put aside for such occasions!

As you say, there is little likelihood of a chisel snapping unless you do something very foolish with it, particularly if you start by annealing it & only re-harden the working end. Because I don't have a linisher or belt sander, I have to anneal them anyway in order to make shaping more manageable. That said, I have been using a couple of un-annealed files as metal-turning tools on a wood lathe for 30 years or more - I made them before I first read the warnings! They are kept quite short & used on edge, not flat like a wood-turning chisel, & only for turning brass at comparatively low speeds. Regular turning tools just didn't cut it (so to speak) when it came to shaping brass. These days, I only use them for cleaning up & neatening the ends of ferrules when making handles, all other metal turning has devolved to the metal lathe.

Which is not meant to be an endorsement of the practice - if you have any doubts about the safety of any process in the workshop it's best to heed your intuition....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I always feel obliged to mention the caveat of using files for chisels. That is they are excellent for ordinary chisels, but folk should be wary of using them for turning chisels as the forces exerted on the lathe can cause them to fracture. This is because the teeth can create virtually invisible weakness below the surface even with the teeth ground off. No problem with everything you have made.

Regards
Paul

Fair comment and one that turners should take heed of! Poor or no heat treatment, annealing / hardening is a recipe for trouble at the lathe.

Over the years I've seen the results from and even witnessed a number of spectacular "tool failures" due to operator error. In one even I saw a brand new 5/8" bowl gouge lose almost 50 mm of tool steel in a rather interesting tool meets bowl blank then tool rest incident. It lifted the turner somewhat and went off like a gunshot.

Ian, Very nice work on the chisels btw. In the distant future you may have some tool collectors scratching their heads trying to match the file makers impressions to the origins of the chisels.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I always feel obliged to mention the caveat of using files for chisels. That is they are excellent for ordinary chisels, but folk should be wary of using them for turning chisels as the forces exerted on the lathe can cause them to fracture. This is because the teeth can create virtually invisible weakness below the surface even with the teeth ground off. No problem with everything you have made.

Thanks, Paul, for that important caveat and explanation why they are not suitable for woodturning.

And, for turning where we are rapidly cutting miles and not just meters of wood shavings, HSS blanks that will hold an edge for so much longer than CS are readily obtained and relatively affordable now...

Just a moment...

I would loved to have been the person to pick this up at a trash and treasure sale Ian.
Its not mine but it was a picture worth saving.
I suppose it could be called a roughing plane? Made from a file.

fileplane.jpg

Ive made a few router cutters from file steel. I usually run them on the inverted router and have a big tall thick block of wood clamped to the table between the router cutter and me just in case something breaks, but they never have.

This one is brazed together and did that mould on the rail bottom. They are all anealled and just the cutting tip re hardened in water and then tempered. A good test after anealling is to put the tool made from a file on an anvil and bash the C out of it with a big hammer to see if you can break it. That'll build your confidence in the steel and the welding.
IMG_2644.JPG IMG_2645.JPG IMG_2648.JPG

Here's the rest of them . They were welded together . Mostly they have a cutting side and a balancing side that is blunt.
IMG_2647.JPG The two on the bottom left are rubbing cutters, I'm not sure what is the correct name. The shaft rubs to set the depth and you hold the router off the job free hand to follow curves. Used in chair making and curved moulded table legs

The two bottom right are double D cutters.
I just used one a few jobs back moulding this table top edge. The beauty of having a cutter made that way is the ease of adjusting the shape if need be . That table edge had to be an exact thickness as specified by the client. And the cutter for the double D was adjusted and tested first to make sure I got it right. Its handy making your own as it would be weeks waiting for expensive carbide cutters to be made and sent from Carbitool. They would possibly cost $400 ea.

Most of my custom moulds are HSS and shaped and used on the spindle moulder.
Sometimes its got to be for the router though and File steel can be welded where as HSS can not be. Its good stuff. You do have to take care though. Grind the tool so its balanced. Test it with a beating while annealed. Just harden the cutting tip. And also place an extra gaurd between your gonads and the spinning cutter when ever possible.
IMG_4390a.jpg IMG_4387a.jpg

Rob.

Rob

You know what you are doing and the associated pitfalls. I am impressed with your efforts and I was pleased to note your comment regarding balancing the bit. Something spinning at 10,000 to 20,000 rpm a bit off centre could be really "exciting." Consequently, the likelihood of a mishap is greatly reduced. My warning was for the inexperienced, who might see Ian's great outcome and take it a step further with a potentially awful incident.

Regards
Paul

So I was with you on the awesomeness of making your own chisels and carving tools... Until making router bits out of old files. Yikes. I've had routers catch and smash projects into toothpicks. I can't
imagine a home made bit giving up the ghost at 20,000 rpm.

I wouldn't recommend you go try it then. You first have to have router control under your belt.

I mainly just put it up because of my interest in re purposed file steel in tools. A lot of re purposed files show up in different forms and people collect it. I have a nice blacksmith made C spanner somewhere that was made from a file. Its an example of beautiful workmanship. The hammered file teeth give a snake skin appearance. Any mention of file made tools here on forum and I usually get involved with what I know and have seen.

The router bits show that the steel does stand up to force if you treat it right. I have heard, like Paul mentioned, of guys just using hard files for turning chisels and sharpening the tip and they break at the lathe. That could also happen with a lot of tool steels that were quench hardened and not tempered or even were tempered hard.
I wouldn't be making router bits if I didn't understand it a bit . The first one I did many years ago held up and I gained confidence in them from that point. That was all after having a few blacksmith set ups and being a member of a blacksmith group at RMIT. And having also done welding and brazing course lessons at RMIT.
Treat things right and don't get to crazy and they can work but play it safe always.

Much more scary than router bits giving up the ghost when moulding timber is spindle moulder blades coming loose. We were taught at a time that old style slotted heads were still the norm . With no safety holding pins. An incident happened at trade school where a student had the blades come loose in a class. While being instructed by a teacher! The blades bounced a few times off the walls at high speed before landing. Missing me and the rest of us. How no one was killed or injured I wonder at still.

Routers and Spindle moulders are like a Mouse compared to a Gorilla when they go off.

Rob

I also had a clenching moment when I first saw Rob's DIY router bits, mostly based on my aversion to old files being used for woodturning, but on reflection there are some mitigating aspects that come to mind.

I re-read Rob's first post and could see from what he wrote that he understood the issues and had the blade smithing skills to minimise the risks, including doing a destructive testing step before use. The very short length of re-hardened CS that Rob has left on the very tip of the cutting edge tip is an indication that he understands the issues involved. Rob has since confirmed that he does have more training and background than most of us to venture where most of us wouldn't go.

Also, TC is way more brittle than CS. Ignoring any remaining deep fractures left from stitching the teeth, the file steel will be a lot tougher than TC.

The carbide cutting part of a TC router bit is braze laminated to a tougher steel backing for almost all of the carbide's cutting width and that cushions and holds the carbide should it shatter. Rob's DIY CS router bits are brazed/welded to the shaft for at least part of their cutting length. The unsupported length of Rob's cutters are also relatively short compared to say a full length file extending way over the tool rest at the lathe...

I had a brother-in-law who trained as a pattern maker in the 1940s and he had a tool chest with many re-purposed files for cutting custom profiles on the lathe. When I questioned him about them he explained that they were taught how to heat treat and use them. Unlike woodturners who turn for speed, pattern makers turn slowly (mostly with fine scraping cuts) in fine even grained woods for precise size and they don't extend the tool much beyond the tool rest. With the right knowledge and in the right hands it can be done, but like my BiL, who would be in his mid 90s if still alive, there are few around that still have the necessary expertise to avoid the potential risks of a re-purposed file at the lathe and thus my aversion to their use in woodturning.

I guess we have hoisted enough red flags now for anyone thinking of replicating what Rob has done with his DIY router bits without the necessary knowledge and expertise to have got the warning messages.

Thanks Neil, Rob and John

I think we have that all sorted now.

Back to Ian's chisels and I couldn't help but note the carving chisel success morphed into a little extra chisel making. Another obsession to rival the planes (and the saws...and the marking gauges...and the marking knives...and...you know where I am going )

Regards
Paul

PS: I might spot something in amongst all that I didn't know I needed .