offroadgreg

Jimmy, I was inquiring on another knifemaking forum about making one of these for myself, and I was told that they are left fairly hard.. hard enough to crack if dropped! Im no expert tho so i cant tell you I've used it and it works.. but I am currently grinding one I forged the other day and Ii plan on leaving it hard to see how it works. Feukair, that is/was a very nice knife you have.. excellent craftsmanship. hopefully the next one wont crack :D

i have made plenty of knives out of files, they are ok material. i believe most files are 1095 or W1... and yes I would DEFFINATELY want to anneal it first. if you dont have a torch or forge, best thing to do would be to build a fire and get a food bed of coals going, set the file in the coals and wait till it gets to a cherry red. now what you can do, is either pile some more wood on the fire and let it die down... or drop the cherry red file in a bucket full of perlite. perlite can be bought at the local gardening shop and is a light white volcanic mineral.. its cheap too, i bought a bag of 17 liters for $4.99 and i have used it for annealing tons of junk. try not to get the stuff called vermiculite tho, it is basically the same but i have heard it can make you sick or something..