Carbide hand files?

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Carbide hand files?

Home Forums Workshop Tools and Tooling Carbide hand files?

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  • #721986
    Rainbows
    Participant
      @rainbows

      After getting my own body weight in files I went down a bit of a file based rabbit hole.

      As a fun aside check out the steelworks of the well known P S Stubs files, don’t make them like that anymore (probably sensibly).

      https://www.ribapix.com/gateway-to-the-holmes-steel-works-rotherham-south-yorkshire_riba57685

      Between getting distracted by brand stamps I’d never heard of and the assorted history of 10 different Sheffield steelworks that were just 4 guys in a shed I pondered if anyone had made a carbide tipped file to do away with ever having to buy new files, or indeed to file through hardened steel. They’ve been made for die grinder burrs after all.

      At current for a mere £250-1000 Pferd will sell me some sort of very coarse file that bolts to I assume specialised production machines. In comparison the chinese will sell me a 2x20x200 bar of carbide for £15. Brazed to a steel backer that would make one face of a general purpose file.  8x8x100 for £12 would make a solid small detail file that you can snap in half by dropping on the floor.

      Brazing carbide to steel is fairly well documented. Grinding the teeth in is going to require some novel set up and fiddling with tooth geometry. Round and half round files are a mystery, god knows how they cut the teeth on those.

      Now with a material price equal or double that of a finished and delivered Vallorbe I don’t think this will take off any time soon. But I am curious if anyone on this forum with its millennia of combined experience has seen, used or tried to make their own carbide files?

       

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      #721993
      Tim Stevens
      Participant
        @timstevens64731

        Diamond files may be worth looking at. Nowhere near as expensive as they sound, either.

        Observant readers will note the lack of vowels in the last sentence. My contacts with PS Stubbs were in Prescott, near St Helens.

        Cheers, Tim

        #721997
        Peter Cook 6
        Participant
          @petercook6

          A quick google got me

          Carbide – Flat File Cintride (alphacut.co.uk) at considerably less money, but they seem to be made the same way as the diamond files, with grains of carbide welded to a carrier. They also do round!

          #722046
          Macolm
          Participant
            @macolm

            Not carbide, but Valorbe have a process to increase the hardness of steel files.

            https://www.vallorbe.com/en-ch/products/files/valtitan

            #722048
            Bill Phinn
            Participant
              @billphinn90025
              On Macolm Said:

              Not carbide, but Valorbe have a process to increase the hardness of steel files.

              https://www.vallorbe.com/en-ch/products/files/valtitan

              I’ve got a half-round 6″ Valtitan file. It’s very good on harder materials.

              Presumably the niche for carbide files as opposed to diamond files is the same as the niche occupied by carbide burrs: they’re hard enough for any metal you’re likely to want to abrade and their typically coarser  cut means they remove material faster than a diamond burr.

              #722052
              Grindstone Cowboy
              Participant
                @grindstonecowboy

                Would they not be liable to chip?

                Rob

                #722079
                jaCK Hobson
                Participant
                  @jackhobson50760

                  Carbide is probably only available as an abrasive file because of cost of machining and brittle: small file teeth are formed hot, not machined. small features need to be reasonably tough.

                  File steel is designed to be hot-workable and fine grained (tough for small features).

                  Some files are machined – the surform/plastic files – which do cut metal well.  I got some ‘plane floats’ recently that might be machined.

                  Valtitan will not cut full martensite steel – don’t try as you will mess up your expensive file quickly 🙁

                  Very Coarse carbide file (intended for ceramic tiles) doesn’t work well on full martensite.

                  Very Coarse diamond does but not for long (maybe because I press too hard… but I always repeat that mistake if that is the case). (light gray DMT, and black DMT have short life).

                  I think waterstones are the fastest way I have found to remove hardened steel by hand. Soft and very coarse. They don’t last long but cheap and very fast.

                  In the trip down the rabbit hole… did you find any full size left handed files? I wish they existed.

                   

                  How about a ‘show us your files’ thread. Two of us might be interested!

                  #722083
                  JasonB
                  Moderator
                    @jasonb

                    The Tome files that ARC sell are all cold worked to cut the teeth and then induction heated and quenched. They have whole rows of those machines that cut the teeth into the cold steel. See the video

                    The Permagrit files are probably a better bet than those rather coarse files linked to earlier, certainly if you want a fine finish

                    #722123
                    Rainbows
                    Participant
                      @rainbows

                      I don’t know how true it is but someone somewhere told me that diamond coated abrasives wear quite fast in steel because the carbon dissolves into the steel. Interestingly the permagrit files stop short of saying they will work on steel though they do mention carbon fibre which I hear is get at abrading tools to bits.

                      As Bill says the argument for carbide teeth would be faster stock removal compared to grit, but then again can a person apply enough horsepower to a file on hardened steel to make use of that. I suppose compared to some smaller and finer files a lump of carbide is as big as their teeth anyhow.

                      Not a clue if they would chip fast or not. Modern scrapers use a carbide tip and get donked by hand onto steel. CNC  tools take tremendous forces but in a very controlled environment.

                      I have access to an old benchtop file cutter, I have hoped to one day measure it up and create a working replica for myself. Looking at the size of them in the Tome video it must have been suitable only for needle files. During the rabbit hole I think it was Nicholson who cut/sharpen their files by blasting them with high pressure steam and a media I can’t remember. Reached in to undercut the tooth for a sharper rake better than a chisel could and cheaper than a milling cutter.

                       

                      Shall we make files.co.uk as a sister site to lathes?

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