Where to buy decent Sheffield Steel Files
- Thread starter Heym SR20
- Start date
Look for Nicholson files. Good quality - made in both USA & Brazil by the Cooper Group.
Ian
Ian
What he said 
Nicholsons are probably the best files you can hold of these days unless you're talking needle files and the like (in which case buy Swiss).
Without wanting to teach my granny to suck eggs ... Don't just have your files loose in a toll box or drawer when you get them. Each tooth is a cutting tool in it's own right and should be treated like a sharp knife. Let them keep bashing against each other and they'll let you down. Look after them as you should and they'll last ages.
Nicholsons are probably the best files you can hold of these days unless you're talking needle files and the like (in which case buy Swiss).Without wanting to teach my granny to suck eggs ... Don't just have your files loose in a toll box or drawer when you get them. Each tooth is a cutting tool in it's own right and should be treated like a sharp knife. Let them keep bashing against each other and they'll let you down. Look after them as you should and they'll last ages.
Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
Soak them in vinegar to freshen them up I did read once. Not tried it though. Boot fairs used to be good hunting grounds.
A wee tale,,,,,,
In 1974 I lived in the state of São Paulo in Brazil and I got the job as Chief Mech Engineer for Nicholson K&F when we installed their first mill file manufacturing plant near Sorocaba. It was a fantastic demanding and exciting job for a young British engineer.
The plant was built all brand new solid precision machinery imported from the USA, with Brazilian built supporting services and we put together a nice facility.
I returned to the UK later in the decade and only went back to Sorocaba in the late nineties, I visited the factory and was amazed how well it had been maintained. It had been kept almost like new, the standards we installed had been kept up and the product quality reflects it.
Happy days!
Ian
In 1974 I lived in the state of São Paulo in Brazil and I got the job as Chief Mech Engineer for Nicholson K&F when we installed their first mill file manufacturing plant near Sorocaba. It was a fantastic demanding and exciting job for a young British engineer.
The plant was built all brand new solid precision machinery imported from the USA, with Brazilian built supporting services and we put together a nice facility.
I returned to the UK later in the decade and only went back to Sorocaba in the late nineties, I visited the factory and was amazed how well it had been maintained. It had been kept almost like new, the standards we installed had been kept up and the product quality reflects it.
Happy days!
Ian
Dunno about Shefield steel...Spear and Jackson took over James Neil who took over P Stubs....
Bahco/Oberg, Grobet Vallorbe both make good files and are available form Amazon
Probably the most used file of my 40 odd years of metalwork was a 10" no.6 cut (think super-fine needle file) Nicholson bought at great cost from Thos. Suttons tool shop in the Birmingham jewellery quarter. A year or so later they had a handful in the odd bin for 50p each so I bought them all, and they are still wrapped in Banrust paper and clogged with candle wax in a drawer 40 years on...the first one never wore out using it on silver and non-ferrous. A big file is so much faster and easier to control than a needle file.
Since moving away from silver onto steel I mostly use grinders of course...though a few years go I made some gates for the Bigg Market in Newcastle and used a 14"(?) Bastard and Second Cut to do the final smoothing on the top back style hinge pin which @ Ø80mm x 80mm, rotated in an Oilite bush!
If you need to de-pin a file don't use the awful file carding brushes. Much kinder to the teeth than the carder's hard wire and much more efficient, is to use a length of aluminium or copper flat bar or thick sheet and push it across the file in line with the teeth cuts...the teeth bite into it and form a mirror image profile which then cleans the file teeth efficiently.
Wipe chalk or wax on the file before you start can also help prevent pinning.
Alan
Bahco/Oberg, Grobet Vallorbe both make good files and are available form Amazon
Probably the most used file of my 40 odd years of metalwork was a 10" no.6 cut (think super-fine needle file) Nicholson bought at great cost from Thos. Suttons tool shop in the Birmingham jewellery quarter. A year or so later they had a handful in the odd bin for 50p each so I bought them all, and they are still wrapped in Banrust paper and clogged with candle wax in a drawer 40 years on...the first one never wore out using it on silver and non-ferrous. A big file is so much faster and easier to control than a needle file.
Since moving away from silver onto steel I mostly use grinders of course...though a few years go I made some gates for the Bigg Market in Newcastle and used a 14"(?) Bastard and Second Cut to do the final smoothing on the top back style hinge pin which @ Ø80mm x 80mm, rotated in an Oilite bush!
If you need to de-pin a file don't use the awful file carding brushes. Much kinder to the teeth than the carder's hard wire and much more efficient, is to use a length of aluminium or copper flat bar or thick sheet and push it across the file in line with the teeth cuts...the teeth bite into it and form a mirror image profile which then cleans the file teeth efficiently.
Wipe chalk or wax on the file before you start can also help prevent pinning.
Alan
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That is indeed something to be very proud of.A wee tale,,,,,,
In 1974 I lived in the state of São Paulo in Brazil and I got the job as Chief Mech Engineer for Nicholson K&F when we installed their first mill file manufacturing plant near Sorocaba. It was a fantastic demanding and exciting job for a young British engineer.
The plant was built all brand new solid precision machinery imported from the USA, with Brazilian built supporting services and we put together a nice facility.
I returned to the UK later in the decade and only went back to Sorocaba in the late nineties, I visited the factory and was amazed how well it had been maintained. It had been kept almost like new, the standards we installed had been kept up and the product quality reflects it.
Happy days!
Ian
K
Who knows how to sharpen a file?
Cawdor118
Well-Known Member
They certainly didn't teach us how when serving my time! How times have changed. We are a "fit a new one" society today.
Do tell.
The old boy I worked with, swore by dunking them in old battery acid...sulfuric acid.
I was lucky enough to buy a crate full when I first started out and am still using them...
Along the same lines as "the best way to get marks out of a metal surface is not to put them in"...I have always been careful that I do not unecessarily blunt them by skivvying them together as @Longstrider says in #3
Alan
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On chalking file teeth, it's lesson number two for an apprentice, after keeping the file flat on the work piece, & not drawing it backwards on the work .. 
& I still have the mark from the pliers my mechanic mentor applied to my knuckles back in 1971, On quality, I returned to surface from a wreck dive with a fistful of files from a cargo intended for the America's, the vessel had burned to the waterline off Anglesey late 1800's, a sharp tap on their edges & they were as good as any quality engineering tools today ! 
& I still have the mark from the pliers my mechanic mentor applied to my knuckles back in 1971, On quality, I returned to surface from a wreck dive with a fistful of files from a cargo intended for the America's, the vessel had burned to the waterline off Anglesey late 1800's, a sharp tap on their edges & they were as good as any quality engineering tools today ! To sharpen files (during manufacture) use the following process.
After teeth are chiseled into the stamped file blank and the tang tapered by forging, the body is heated & quench hardened. (Best quality high carbon steel). A transfer line first acid bat soaks the files in a secret formula to bring up the edge of the teeth (so the ole' boys taught a couple of you well!) then a rinse & neutralizer bath before finish sharpening.
This is done as a vapour blast operation -- fine media in water emulsion driven through jets by superheated steam running at 250psi in a massive vapour stack chamber. Angle of incidence of the media is critical it is fired into the cutting edge front edge.
Our factory had two huge Babcock & Willcox boilers (12 Tons per hour if I remember right) just to drive the blast cabinet. - It is an awe inspiring process and clearly dangerous. I'll never forget running that system up for the first time. -- Hair raising!! Running those oil fired boilers was by far the most expensive revenue cost of the whole process. - No wonder files are expensive!
So to resharpen files you could copy the process if you have a blast cabinet - acid bath first , a rinse & then use the finest of hard grade media driven at the highest possible blast pressure.
Ian
After teeth are chiseled into the stamped file blank and the tang tapered by forging, the body is heated & quench hardened. (Best quality high carbon steel). A transfer line first acid bat soaks the files in a secret formula to bring up the edge of the teeth (so the ole' boys taught a couple of you well!) then a rinse & neutralizer bath before finish sharpening.
This is done as a vapour blast operation -- fine media in water emulsion driven through jets by superheated steam running at 250psi in a massive vapour stack chamber. Angle of incidence of the media is critical it is fired into the cutting edge front edge.
Our factory had two huge Babcock & Willcox boilers (12 Tons per hour if I remember right) just to drive the blast cabinet. - It is an awe inspiring process and clearly dangerous. I'll never forget running that system up for the first time. -- Hair raising!! Running those oil fired boilers was by far the most expensive revenue cost of the whole process. - No wonder files are expensive!
So to resharpen files you could copy the process if you have a blast cabinet - acid bath first , a rinse & then use the finest of hard grade media driven at the highest possible blast pressure.
Ian
Stalker62
Well-Known Member
My old school (one up from a Borstal really) was a fairly rough old place and very strictly run by the wardens, sorry teachers.
I recall the only opportunity the boys could ever "misbehave" and get away with it was in metalwork class - loudly and frequently asking for the "Bastard file".
Childish I know but then children we were...
I recall the only opportunity the boys could ever "misbehave" and get away with it was in metalwork class - loudly and frequently asking for the "Bastard file".
Childish I know but then children we were...
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@Yorric
I had assumed that the acid undercut like it does under the resist when etching?
Interesting to blast as well that must be very fine media on the finer cut files. The hardest most aggressive and long lasting I use is chilled iron. And that gradually breaks down into dust which is sucked into the filter bag. That filter dust could be effective in a water stream!
In the late 1970s I watched Bob Siddaway the then foreman of Vaughan’s Hope Works cutting the hatching into a leg vice face with a dumpy little chisel and curiously cranked stumpy hammer. It was just a wrist action with the hammer and beautifully continuous...not position chisel then strike. But just strike strike strike a new cut with every blow. He said he had made a lot of hand cut files and rasps in his time!
Alan
I had assumed that the acid undercut like it does under the resist when etching?
Interesting to blast as well that must be very fine media on the finer cut files. The hardest most aggressive and long lasting I use is chilled iron. And that gradually breaks down into dust which is sucked into the filter bag. That filter dust could be effective in a water stream!
In the late 1970s I watched Bob Siddaway the then foreman of Vaughan’s Hope Works cutting the hatching into a leg vice face with a dumpy little chisel and curiously cranked stumpy hammer. It was just a wrist action with the hammer and beautifully continuous...not position chisel then strike. But just strike strike strike a new cut with every blow. He said he had made a lot of hand cut files and rasps in his time!
Alan
Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
Renovating a file.
Back to the original subject, Bahco files off eBay are good.
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