Thread: Saw File a dud, need advice

Righteo, just for you, Brett, I put aside what I was doing this arvo & had a crack at your files. It so happens I will be using a couple of the raw blades you sent me, just as soon as I finish something entirely different that I began last week (& keep putting aside to muck about with other stuff!) I think the results described below illustrate some of what I've been blathering on about, & are germaine to this thread.

First up, I selected one of the 5" files (they are marked "Iridium" so I hope they are the correct ones?). I grabbed a 250mm blade blank (0.025") and marked out the tooth spacing at 12ppi with a template and an old file. I then fitted the file into my Veritas filing guide, noting that the corners weren't particularly consistent, one was much fatter than the other two. Off I went along the blade, two firm strokes on each mark. It petered out entirely about 3/4 of the way along the blade (at the point marked with the arrow): first & 2nd edges.jpg

I switched to a new edge & finished the row. I'd marked where I'd switched edges, but didn't need to, it's pretty obvious: fading teeth.jpg

You can clearly see how the teeth are becoming not only shallower from right to left, but more erratic. This is because I had to push hard on the file to get it to cut at all, and when I have to do that, I lose control and wobble a bit, despite the file guide. By forcing the file, and using all three edges, I did manage to cut all the teeth, but they were a bit of a sad lot. Compare them (top lot) with a 15 tpi set I made using a Corradi needle file. Teeth cf.jpg

I stupidly set the smaller teeth before I remembered I was supposed to be recording each step, but the small teeth are at least up to standard.

The file, however was completely kactus - the edges were almost completely smooth: Ir edge.jpg

Next cab off the rank was one of the needle files. It was clearly stamped 'Corradi' so I know it was the right one. I also noted the 'inox' stamped on the hndle, and thought to myself that making files from stainless steel seems a bit odd, unless it's for some special purpose. It was applied to the saw plate at 15tpi to 250mm length of 0.020" plate. Took all three sides to tooth the saw. The fade-out wasn't as rapid or quite as severe as it was for the 5" file, so my teeth look a lot better. I tried to photograph the edges, but it doesn't show well. Believe me, it's almost toothless: Corradi needle f.jpg

I thought I'd better try & finish the jobs, so I pulled out a Japanese file that has seen quite a bit of use already & used that to put the fleam on the 12tpi saw. With care & concentration I managed to even up the rather messy job left by the 'Iridium'. I tried it out (no handle or spine, just holding he plate in my hand) and cut through a 30 x25 piece of she-oak no probs.

The smaller-toothed saw I finished with a near-new #6 cut Vallorbe. Quite a difference! Despite being several grades finer (the Corradi is stamped as a '2') it cut more easily and much more smoothly.

So there you go, neither file was a standout - I'd rate them on the slightly poor side of what seems to be 'normal' for files manufactured these last 20 years or so. They are now resting in the 'dead files' tin, along with a lot of other files, good & bad, that I've used up over the last 12 months or so: Dead files.jpg

What do you say?
Cheers,

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

I know of this brand. They are the ones that said something about "the concave bosom is satisfying" or something (hard to imagine it being true though....). They made an appearance in the Saw Files 101 thread (that has since lost most of its pictures ).

IIRC they were not slim enough, but they may be a very well made file.

Wait...they ARE slim enough....check out the face width of the 4" XX:
Attachment 439106

May need to see if I can get through to them again. (they ignored me last time, probably because of language).

I'm not sure, but I have a suspicion that the parallel files that Ian (now) has may be Tsubosan. Pretty sure they are also the Atoma Diamond Plate people.

Brett, why don't you ask Stu to see what he can do. Failing that and no promises but a cousin of mine has recently returned to Oz after living in Japan for about thirty years so we may be able to ask him for help with the language problems.

I bought as an emergency purchase a modern Nicholson file a few years back. I still have it somewhere to remind me to never ever buy that brand again. It was unable, straight out of the packet, to cut steel. The best files I have used are the old Wiltshire files, which I bought, somewhat ironically, from America. The seller took great delight in telling me that they worked equally well even if I was filing upside down. Most files I buy are NOS.

Regards
Paul

I'd expect this topic to meet a familiar thud if it's brought up again in the states, but it seems to be a real problem there.

You can either buy vintage, or nothing, it appears. Japanese taper saw files or liogier (presuming here) are going to be a multiple of what we pay for bahco, and opportunistically, vintage files in profile where bahco doesn't exist, but japanese or liogier presents a value problem in the states given the $3-$6 cost of bahcos in volume.

Now, if Snap On decides at some point that selling files cheaply vs. super high margin overly expensive tools isn't a great idea, we'll be in real trouble here, too, and there will be panic.

I wouldn't advise someone overseas buy a mexican-made nicholson for another decade - who knows what you'll get, and if it's priced like a legitimate file, definitely not. At the same price as bulk bahco here, it's already a nonstarter unless you need a file that day and you're in home depot.

Ian's sentiments about a good file are exactly why i like bahco. they're in between in hardness, so they last a long time, but they don't shed teeth on corners (overhard is not good, there's no unicorn above their hardness that I've found). The corners are a bit chubby, but they're identical each time and stay the same shape through dullness, never requiring a couple of strokes to get the gullet to match the file. the one thing I did like about the old nicholsons, though, is that the finer corners allowed you to cheat a little on file size, filing smaller teeth without leaving a rounded gullet. I found out the hard way that doing that with a fat cornered bahco just leads to a dovetail saw that clogs.

I didn't mention anything in response to the question, but I can confirm that as far as I know, there are no reasonable filemakers in the US making anything. There could be cottage industries of farriers rasps or something that I don't know about, but I'm not aware of any files. I didn't even know glen drake was marketing files now, too, but that part of the market is something I never look at (gimmicks, etc, that cost much more than volume-made tools like bahcos or the old nicholson and simonds files).

I have had decent luck with some simonds files, too (and I'm sure they're not us made - they don't say anything at all), but it hangs in the back of my head that I've had a few slow cutters. And they're not cheaper than bahco in volume.

As far as you guys buying our vintage files, it's probably not a bad idea. Ebay has pretty much eliminated stuff like that on the ground here, so you're just as well off as we are other than the taxes.

In terms of any other ventures (like selling a $15 saw file in the US), I wouldn't bother. It'll draw heat on the forums and you will sell little, because we just don't have the problem the europe and Au have in terms of supply at this point. There are a few chickens here who won't order from a drop shipper (in the words of some folks on SMC when I posted where I get bahcos - way back when - "I don't like the customer service from that shipper. They couldn't tell me where my order was, and it made me frustrated.". That's an interesting thing to demand from a drop shipper. They don't have customer service, they never see the files and they're probably making about three bucks on your order. You're getting files for half of what they cost from any other vendor - that part makes me excited. If they're three days late from what I expect, who cares.

I guess one of the things we've exported to the world now is the expectation that if a seller makes $3 of margin on you, then you can expect them to drop whatever they're doing (even if it's a six figure order for an industrial customer) and call you back right away to make you feel like you matter to them (of course, as that buyer, you don't. I won't pay $9 a file for $4 files just to "make friends" with a vendor).

Ian,

Thanks, I'm somewhat surprised in the performance of both Corradi's. I get good wear out of them in sharpening, not cutting new teeth - that's something I do with a tooth punching machine. I have gotten a lot of saws filed with a single Corinox needle file with the #2 cut. The #0 cut Corinox needle file didn't work well and after a while started to lose teeth.
I also like the Iridiums even though they don't last as long as the Corinox but I just sharpen with them. For that use they have be more or less similar in performance to the old Nicholsons I have.

Regards,
Rob

The Liogier 5" EST that Ian used is about AUD11.80 or USD8.50. That's a 2015 price, but using current exchange rates (and the A$ is a little lower than usual against the USD and very low against the Euro).

That's almost identical in price to a 5" Bahco EST from one of the only known sources here. Another supplier in Queensland (Brisbane perhaps?) charges $9 ea by the box of 10, without the dinky handles.

Yeah, you guys have a problem there that we don't have- which is a bummer.

I see that file (bahco) at $4.40 each here in the states (I never buy those plastic handles, either, except for those that come with the maxi cut simonds flat files here - because I can find them cheaper with handles than without).

Originally Posted by rob streeper

Ian,

Thanks, I'm somewhat surprised in the performance of both Corradi's. I get good wear out of them in sharpening, not cutting new teeth - that's something I do with a tooth punching machine....

Rob - don't be too upset, toothing-in with files is extremely cruel to the poor things, as you well-know. You'll get far more life out of a file doing minor re-shaping & sharpening, that's to be expected. The damage mostly occurs in the first couple of strokes as you begin to form the teeth. It takes a 'good' file to tolerate that sort of loading. Once you get halfway down the new gullet, the force is distributed over many times the area, so even a not-so-good file copes from there.

I didn't mean to badmouth the Corradi needle files. I didn't find the one I used as durable as Vallorbes usually are, but it is a single file, and a single job, so I woudn't go to court on that! I had a couple of Vallorbes recently, which threw in the towel after what I thought was only a minor beating, so it doesn't pay to be judgemental too soon, with files.

I stick by my assessment of the Iridiums - on the softer side of average. Having used the TFs and the Iridiums directly after the Liogier, the difference was pretty stark & hard to ascribe to prejudice alone! A Liogier file also perfomed well, according to 3 different people (who didn't know what brands they were using) in Brett's 'Great File Test', which is comforting - they just might be consistently good, but we won't know until a lot more get used.

D.W., this is 2018 and there's been a little inflation since 1960. Getting top quality files for $4 each would be great for us users, but I can't see how it's possible unless you use slave labour - even then, packaging & transport are going to eat up a substantial part of the $4!

While I wouldn't say 'happy', I'm at least accepting of a price of $12-14 for a saw file that's truly 'good'. That's the reality of the current price structures in our less-fortunate country. The price has to be amortised over the number of saws the file will sharpen, and I'd be willing to bet the unit cost wouldn't be much different on that basis. But what I really want is the clean, consistent, cutting of the 'good' file - it makes the job so much easier and the results so much better. I reckon this is one place where even a good workman can blame the tool....

Cheers,

Ian

You make a very good point in differentiating between normal sharpening and either re-toothing or significant shaping. Also I think that the smaller files (5" downwards) are less tolerant and more likely to suffer corner damage. In filing in teeth I normally expect to completely use up a file and that may only be to achieve the tooth shape.

I would also make the point that not all saws are the same length so there is considerable variation in how long a file will last between users. Extensive work on a 26" handsaw with 10/12ppi is akin to about two and a half back saws and the plate thickness is more requiring the removal of more metal.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by D.W.

Same for Grobet's files that are labeled anything other than swiss made (and the expensive swiss made files don't hold up as well as bahcos).

To be clear, there are no expensive swiss made saw files. There are expensive swiss made double cut needle files (which have been discussed here). Just because the are sourced by the retailers from Suisse, and are shipped from there, does not mean they were made there.

This even had Lee Valley fooled - they used to market Grobet Suisse as "made in Switzerland". Some years ago I made them aware of this and to their great credit they dropped Grobet Suisse altogether as a direct result - I think they were somewhat mortified that they had been duped. They did some substantial background checking to assure themselves that what I said was correct (as I would expect them to do).

I don't know what brand they are selling now, but I have learnt that the key with LV is if the country of manufacture is not mentioned, then it's because it may be "a little embarrassing" - i.e. China or India or any other place with dodgy inconsistent production. I downloaded the pics from the LV site but even after enlarging I can't read the logo, but certainly it has the "Indian Black Ink Stamp of Death".

Note that the point here is not that LV have increased the quality of their files (probably not) but that they are no longer inadvertently marketing them as something they are not.

Yes on the LV markings - if it's US, western europe or canada, it'll say so. The rest is a grab bag, but it'd be false to say that LV does much that would embarrass anyone. they are good to their employees, generous, and ownership isn't that generous to themselves. It's hard to fault them.

No clue on the grobet swiss files. They do still make files in switzerland, and I've never bought their needle files, but I figure the stuff they make swiss is probably large high dollar jeweler type stuff. The last file I bought from grobet that wasn't known indian was in 2009, so not sure what's changed since then. At that time, it was a swiss made barrette file, a bigger one.

In terms of the comments above about price, I'm sure liogier can make $8 or $9 files, and I'm sure the japanese can make files around that, but they aren't doing it efficiently compared to cooper. At the time cooper went overseas, a 6" slim at retail on the ground here was $4 - US made. That'd equate to about $5 now. If bahco makes files in portugal (about 40% of the GDP per person, I'm sure they can be comfortably made there and sold here for $4 for the inexpensive sizes up to $8 for the bigger ones. Nobody is being cheated and nobody is starving.

Grobet's web site mentions that they have production of certain items in the United States. I've never seen them, but that could be government contract work, so I could be wrong about nothing being made here. However, I've never seen anything made here at retail.

I do think the bottom line here is that the only filemaker who is making files that are as good as anything (bahco) isn't distributed there for a price as reasonable as here. There's no real reason that it can't be done. If snap on is drop selling them for $4 per in the united states, there's probably more room. As long as I've been into this hobby, those files have been from portugal, and of the files I've tried, they're the only one who has been supplying nearly identical files for that period of time. Someone could potentially make a file that matches them and do it with as constant of a supply, but they're the best at what they're doing at this point. Most of the rest are "could, should, did in the past, can from time to time".

In terms of what comes to our shores here, if someone makes files half as efficiently and charges twice or more as much (be it auriou or liogier or another firm that services the woodworking hobby), good for them. I hope (but I doubt it will be the case) that the bloggers in the US can make an honest assessment when it comes to a large efficient consistent maker vs. the boutique makers. There's a lot of cronyism in the chris schwarz's of the world. They are biased toward whoever goes and pays for booths at shows or whoever makes themselves accessible to the woodworking hobby. Snap on doesn't really do that, so I guess we'll have to rely on people like Paul Sellers (who has the same view about bahcos, despite their horrible price in the UK).

Well, those are the first xx slim bahcos I've seen sold at retail in the states that are under 6 inches long.

I might be forced to buy a couple at that kind of high price. I wouldn't be surprised if they get those files through a distributor that sells them for more than drop ship price here in the states, though.

Originally Posted by D.W.

Well, those are the first xx slim bahcos I've seen sold at retail in the states that are under 6 inches long.

I had missed Bahco at the very top of that LV page. I read all the blurb looking for a brand name mentioned there.....

That's quite pleasing that they've gone with Bahco. They do seem to be the pick of the mass produced saw files. I do wish Bahco would move away from using a black ink logo - it cheapens the brand terribly. As a mark of (at least reasonable) quality they need to be punched. I can't imagine that adds too much to the price - I would have thought it was done when the stamp the blank, but maybe it's a separate process (dunno enough about manu processes). Even so, the black is another process somewhere along the line.

Originally Posted by D.W.

it'd be false to say that LV does much that would embarrass anyone. they are good to their employees, generous, and ownership isn't that generous to themselves. It's hard to fault them.

That is not what I said. I was referring to the country of manufacture being embarrassing, not LV embarrassing anyone. I can't fault LV at all - in fact just last week I had brief dialogue with Rob Lee about him setting the world benchmark for service.



As for $8 or $9 files not being worth it - if the file is superior to a Bahco in terms of giving a better gullet shape, and lasting longer then as far as individual punters are concerned then they probably are worth extra money. If an $8 file lasts around (say) 50% longer than a $4 file, and gives better shape then it's probably value for money. As I have highlighted below, it seems you were happy to pay $6-8 in packs of 10 until you found those other drop shippers doing them for less (that's not a criticism, just saying that until just recently $6-8 was fine by you).

Originally Posted by D.W.

Bahco saw files. Nothing else is better at this point, and the only issue with them is that they have a slightly wider edge (makes a more rounded gullet) and there are no xx slim available in some or all places (I can't get them here in xx slim profiles).

Not sure what bahcos cost in australia, but they're about $6-$8 each in packs of 10 here, and maybe a little more for some sizes from folks who sell them individually.

Wow, this certainly has been educational. Thanks one and all