Beginner’s guide to filing.

[Heym SR20]

The file is the basic tool of gunsmithing. With a set of good files and a vice you can pretty much build a gun, or make any part of a gun, or for that matter any machine.

This little video gives the basics.



And with an ability to turn a piece of metal you can make the round bits. In this case a piece of silver steel drill rod filed into a firing pin.

 

[Utectok]

Blondie hacks is an absolute legend been watching her videos for ages a brilliant machinist on manual machines

 

[angusb1]

Blondie hacks is an absolute legend been watching her videos for ages a brilliant machinist on manual machines

Yes she's great. Watched loads of her videos

 

[enfieldspares]

The man used to run the welding business, Cain Welding, I used to use had when he was young and just starting in light engineering the apprenticeship piece of the one inch square tube as a task. He recalls that he and his fellow lads would present their pieces when done to have them checked. With the soon after words "Wrong. Do it again." And that workpiece being thrown into the scrap bin. I see that she doesn't chalk her file?

 

[NoIDeer]

As an engineering apprentice in 1976 my first year was spent making a tool box, literally a box full of tools using mainly hand tools.

I thought I'd had my fill of all that stuff but that was trip down memory lane. Thank you.

 

[Donkey Basher]

As an engineering apprentice in 1976 my first year was spent making a tool box, literally a box full of tools using mainly hand tools.

I thought I'd had my fill of all that stuff but that was trip down memory lane. Thank you.

My Grandad was a tool maker at Cowley back in the day, we still have his apprentice tool box, it is an amazing piece of work & testament to the days when people learned how to make things properly & we had a manufacturing industry in this country. We’ll likely never see the like again

 

[udderlyoffroad]

it is an amazing piece of work & testament to the days when people learned how to make things properly

Without wishing to drag this thread off on a political tangent, apprentices are still busily making their own toolboxes today. seemingly endless filing features quite heavily too.

And yes Blondiehacks is one of the better engineering channels. She doesn’t waffle endlessly about all the fancy left hand spangledammers other YouTubers have sent her for 15 minutes before every video for a start.

 

[JTO]

When my family ran a local brickworks, they had a new 75HP single cylinder gas engine delivered to pull the wagons of clay back from the pit. They produced the gas onsite. I presume this replaced horses. The engine had a 6 inch crank shaft with a 50cwt flywheel at each end. The flywheels wouldn't fit on the shaft, so my dad and George Goff, the blacksmith, had to file the ends of the shaft to fit. Every time the engine fired, you could see the shaft bend, apparantly! "George's end was always working loose, but my end never". My dad was heard to say.
My dad served his apprenticeship as a steam fitter with a firm that ran paddlesteamers, c1903-1908!

 

[finnbear270]

My eldest lad is still working at Broughton, straight from school, I remember him bringing home bench exercise pieces.

 

[Scarpa]

I did the basic training at Broughton BAe too, served me well over the years especial with custom knife work, and my 40 year old toolbox is still in use at my old house in Wales which my cousin now lives in.

 

[bobo]

Its easy.
Or at least it is easy when you done it a lot for a long time .

As a Toolmaker apprentice back in the late 80ies, the first task was to file a drawing tool for stick ice cream forming. Rough measurements in mild tool steel, and finish measurement after hardening to 58 Hrc, tolerances +/- 0,02 mm on all measurements at finish. The first one took 2 months, at the end of the 4-year apprenticeship I could do it in 1 week.
Try making precision filing in cobber or aluminum with surface roughness better than 0,08 Ym, that’s a challenge.

Hardened steel takes a diamond or CBN file but is by far the easiest material to get precise measurements in when filing.

 

[urban]

... the first task was to file a drawing tool for stick ice cream forming. ...

I have absolutely no idea what that means.

 

[bobo]

The ice-cream on the picture is made in a mold.
The machine making these ice-creams have 2000-8000 molds for forming those ice-creams in carrusel setup.
Those molds are made out of 0,8mm stainless steel or 0,6mm titanium sheet, and formed by a drawing tool.
The drawing tool is a exact image of the finished product, this means the drawing tool looks like the finished ice cream, just made out of hardened polished tool steel.

 

[urban]

What a great answer! Thank you.

 

[viking90]

Electric spinny files with 4.5" discs in them save so much time. How things have changed

 

[Klenchblaize]

As an engineering apprentice in 1976 my first year was spent making a tool box, literally a box full of tools using mainly hand tools.

I thought I'd had my fill of all that stuff but that was trip down memory lane. Thank you.

Vickers?

The Crayford Apprentice Shop/School hand a fully functioning machine gun on display outsider the classroom! Circa 1974.

K

 

[Bavarianbrit]

Spent my 15th to 16th years at the BSA Group Midland Training Centre in Armoury Road B"ham filing, turning, milling, grinding, gas welding etc. Then I went over to Humber Coventry working with wood, fibreglass and clay so I never got to practice what BSA gave me, but it stays with you for your whole life.
No regrets making/filing a one inch block, square in all directions within a tolerance of maybe one thou.

 

[Bavarianbrit]

Vickers?

The Crayford Apprentice Shop/School hand a fully functioning machine gun on display outsider the classroom! Circa 1974.

K

My milling instructor at BSA made a Colt 1911 fully working as to racking etc. Back in 1966.

 

[Tim.243]

Vickers?

The Crayford Apprentice Shop/School hand a fully functioning machine gun on display outsider the classroom! Circa 1974.

K

My "corner" was a manual Bridgeport imperial no dro
A shaper and a Arno universal mill

One of the bosses came down from the office after looking out the window and said

Don't expect to get paid more for running 3 machines Tim but fair play
At 16 I had the shaper taking the forging crust of a block of "impax"
the Arno facing off from the flat side I had made with the shaper
I was roughing out a job on the Bridgeport
More chips than McCain's that week

Pretty much left on my own until I got stuck, the same Boss drove from Sudbury to the training collage as I was told not to use a ripper cutter on the collage mill! They switched the mill off and put me in the front office,
Never forget him turning up in his big Safari Citron and could hear the shouting from the other room lol
"he is moving metal that is how we have shown him" Rip Mick

 

[Klenchblaize]

Where to purchase decent new files in 2025??

K