1. Home
  2. ⏣ General Metalworking
  3. Making machinist metalworking files

Making machinist metalworking files

Folx,

I needed some wide (2"+), slim (1/8" and 3/32) files to file narrow slots in 7075 Al. As nothing like that is commercially available, I made my own.

Tilted mini-mill's head to about 30 degrees and with 3/8 4Fl EM, cut grooves about .030 deep, spaced with .030. The grove is cut in Y and then the table was advanced the .030 in X. Repeat till it hurtZ.

Pretty tiring :), but the results are most excellent. The files _eat_ that Al like nothing else. Single cut, at an angle - I used same angle as on some "factory" files I had.

I used A2 and didn't temper @ all, for max RC. Strips were held by magnetic chuck. After HT, there's no warpage of any sort. I use "plate-quench", an invention from knife making community - after the foil-wrapped steel is removed from the

1750F (for A2) inferno, it is laid flat onto a massive steel/Al plate, and then another plate is laid on top of it. It cools it 20 times faster than the air (as the steel will quench almost as good in still air, there's no benefit from it) and most importantly keeps the piece flat as it cools.

Figure some1 might need something like that one of these days and it is perfectly doable in home shop conditions.

Reply to
rashid111
Loading thread data ...

Hey Rashid,

Good stuff. You should submit that as an article to one of the magazines.

Take care.

Brian Laws>Folx,

Reply to
Brian Lawson

have you ever seen the original machines they used to use for making files? hard to describe, but in its most basic sense all it was is a jig to hold the file material, and something very similar to a cold chisel held by an arm at a set angle and the arm indexed to move along at the same step each time, or sometimes with the arm fixed and the file material moving along at an indexed distance. Strike the chisel, move the arm forward one step, repeat, temper

Shaun

Reply to
Shaun Van Poecke

Seen a film about that. Very interesting! We have a TV-series here that's called "The last one of his trade". Very well made reports!

They showed one (working in the ex-GDR) who refurbished files. Yes, refurbished old files! He went to the shops, took dull files with him, ground off the teeth, annealed them, bent them straight, chiseled the new teeth (with machines well over 100 years old), case hardened them and then tempered them in lead. Don't know how much he asked for that job. Most of the files he repaired were machine files.

Nick

Reply to
Nick Mueller

What is the title of the program in German?

Wes

Reply to
Wes

"Der Letzte seines Standes". Reports over all trades, not just (very few) metal-related. But things like making stone-ovens for baking bread, making wells with wooden tubes, carving troughs, engraving for printing, casting lead-letters for printing, making wooden wheels for carriages, ...

You can order them (or most of them) here:

Nick

Reply to
Nick Mueller

I will give you one better: I saw it being done by hand. At an accordion factory in Russia, they go through the files at rate of dozens a day. Traditional Russian method of making accordion reeds is to file them by hand. So you have about 10 folx filing @ spring-tempered 1095, @ 48RC.

The files go FAST.

So this gent anneals them, grinds the old "teeth" off and then with a chisel and a hammer, puts the pattern back on. He never looks at the file, does it all by feel. He can talk, sing and dance - all while doing it :)

The files get progressively slimmer with this technique.

Now, for my purposes (which happen to be filing the very accordion reed openings in Al reed plates), I need wide files with the the grooves @ uniform depth, so I figured I'd mill them. Couldn't be happier with the results !

Reply to
rashid111

Second that, Brian ! It was an ingenious solution all the way around.

Reply to
Robert Swinney

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.