rasp vs file

[yt12]

Good day all-----have a small pile of old files and rasps looking for new lives.I was curious if IN GENERAL there was a difference in materials used for metal files,wood rasps,farrier rasps ?----Now before anyone beats me up,I learned long ago measure 3 times,if yer gonna shoot,shoot dont talk and test every metal as new----but,IN GENERAL---in the olden days,any benchmark for farrier rasp vs metal bastard for content ? Thanks in advance.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Ideally we would be talking about the same tool steels, but as everyone is looking out how to save a few cents in the manufacturing process some times we find some case hardened rasps and even files, tho my experience is if you can snap the rasp or file to the desired length for your billet then they are of sufficient carbon content. 

 

[jmccustomknives]

There's a way to test them.  I'll heat the tang with a torch and quench in water then clamp it in a vice and give it a tap with a hammer.  If it bends over it goes in the scrap pile.  If it snaps clean it goes in the maybe pile.  Since manufactures used a variety of steels the performance cf the steels will also vary.  I've never found a bad old Nicholson or Black Diamond mill file.  Rasp on the other hand are a crap shoot.  I've found "reputable" brands that were case hardened so be wary and test all of them.

[TwistedCustoms]

I second the Black Diamond but be aware that the Nicholson logo is still in use but it is now stamped on China junk. Black Diamonds are a safe bet, old Nicholson also but the operative word is old. If they are high carbon they should be close to R64 if they haven't been through a fire. It shouldn't take more than a tap with a hammer to snap an inch off of a good file when it's locked in the vise.I picked up a large Nicholson mill bastard at a big-box store and was able to put a right angle bend in it in the vise without it breaking. The outer skin peeled close to the bend, looked like about .050 deep case hardening.

[arkie]

Twisted, would you be willing to share the initials of the name of the big box store with the case hardened Nicholson file (or maybe a PM)?  I just picked up a couple of Nicholson large mill bastards at HD and am wondering if................

[yt12]

Thank you all for the input,it is appreciated---some testing on the horizon.Will add,I too just brought home a handfull of Nicholson BDs---HD had them in their double secret clearance pile----buck and change for the 10 inchers---these are hecho in mexico,not getting glowing reports on-line,but for the price I had to grab them.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

This information came straight from the materials guy at Nicholson, and he has been with the company for 47+ years now.

Yes, they use different alloys for different files and rasps. The machinist files get the better alloy since hooves and wood are not as hard as steel.

They have used the same alloys for as long as he has worked there.

Some files are case, or pack hardened to add even more carbon to the teeth. I'm thinking these would be the black diamonds.

There have been some counterfeit files baring their logo dumped on the US market. So compare the logo to their website as the fakes are slightly different.

He wouldn't give me the exact alloy, but when I asked about heat treating he said that treating the machinist files like W-1 would be a good choice.

[yt12]

Biggun-----good info,thanks !!

[Michael Cochran]

I called Nicholson one day after finding a stash of trashed files and the guy on the phone told me to treat them like 1095. Now I'm gonna have to see what's different between 1095 and W1. 

[ThomasPowers]

The real old black diamonds---the ones without nicholson stamped on them were 1.2% carbon; I was preferentially collecting them back when I lived in central Ohio for use in billets...Haven't seen many out here in the southwest.

[TwistedCustoms]

16 hours ago, arkie said:

Twisted, would you be willing to share the initials of the name of the big box store with the case hardened Nicholson file (or maybe a PM)?  I just picked up a couple of Nicholson large mill bastards at HD and am wondering if................

Wonder no more....I worked in manufacturing and I know it's possible for a production facility to have a bad run but sheesh! A lot of old name tool companies have been bought out and while we still see their logos on the shelf the products are only a shadow of what they once were. I don't hate China, I hate poorly made junk that tries to pass itself off as premium. What I have seen time and again when companies move manufacturing to China as that the early production runs are spot on. Then, as soon as the over site of the US setup team is gone the factories start cutting corners and if left unchecked the quality drops off the chart.

Sorry for the rant, yeah it was HD.

[arkie]

Thanks. I am in agreement with you as well.

[olfart]

On 4/8/2016 at 0:58 PM, TwistedCustoms said:

Wonder no more....I worked in manufacturing and I know it's possible for a production facility to have a bad run but sheesh! A lot of old name tool companies have been bought out and while we still see their logos on the shelf the products are only a shadow of what they once were. I don't hate China, I hate poorly made junk that tries to pass itself off as premium. What I have seen time and again when companies move manufacturing to China as that the early production runs are spot on. Then, as soon as the over site of the US setup team is gone the factories start cutting corners and if left unchecked the quality drops off the chart.

Sorry for the rant, yeah it was HD.

For those who are old enough to remember, we went through the same thing with Japanese-made stuff in the 50s. Once they got quality control set up, they started making good stuff. I suspect China's somewhere on that learning curve and will catch on eventually.

[Nobody Special]

A lot of China's stuff is good, great even. Ya just got to remember they've got a third of the world's population, and much of the industrial production. Add that in with the fact that you can get expensive quality stuff a lot closer without all the nasty tariff fees and shipping... Well, we get a lot of the junk and counterfeits, stuff designed specifically for selling to people looking to buy cheap imported crap. Better still, keep quality control low on it, and they'll buy another shortly.

Fer example...Got to working on a transmission in a 99 Dodge the other day, and found myself in need of a torque wrench that would go in inch lbs. No problem, headed to Lowes. Nope. Home Depot? Nope. Autozone, O'Reilley, Ace Hardware, (really, really starting to cuss Mopar at this point...), no luck. Looked online and could find one that would be there in 3 days. 120 bucks. Local Sears could get it in Craftsman. 3 days, plus the contents of your bank account plus your firstborn child. Pep Boys...$200, and it'll be there in 3 days.

Harbor Freight though? Had a cheap Chinese knockoff, $14 and a 20 minute drive. I know it's junk, I know it'll go out of calibration on about the 5th band I adjust, but...

It doesn't help that you can't get a lot of tools or supplies anymore except by an expensive order and shipping, or at one of the discount places. My local box stores have stopped carrying at least - hammer handles, steel wire wheels for a bench grinder (they have brass coated), any wheel for a bench grinder but coarse, carbide drill bits, fencing tool (the little plier/hammer doodads for box wire and staples...), firebrick, thermocouples for water heaters, umm......i don't remember, every other time I go though, they've dropped something from the inventory. It's starting to feel like when you walk into one of the Hobby Lobbys looking for yarn or beads or such and run into 20 acres of plastic plants instead.

[gote]

Why do you not recalculate from imperial to metric??

[John McPherson]

gote, wrenches in foot-pounds are for large bolt sizes and coarse adjustments, wrenches calibrated for inch-pounds are used for small bolts and fine adjustments, The difference between a blacksmith's sledgehammer and a jeweler's chasing hammer.

 

[Nobody Special]

I've got metric and standard (imperial). Just the big boy sizes that you usually run into in auto work. It does get you close, but if I say need 24 inch lbs and my big wrench is one lb off, I may be 50 percent off, instead of the say 3 percent if I had a large bolt that was supposed to go to 30 ft lbs. Not good when adjusting transmission bands.

Or to make it more metric, I needed one that read in Newton centimeters instead of Newton meters.

[Kozzy]

On April 11, 2016 at 6:51 AM, Nobody Special said:

A lot of China's stuff is good, great even. Ya just got to remember they've got a third of the world's population, and much of the industrial production. Add that in with the fact that you can get expensive quality stuff a lot closer without all the nasty tariff fees and shipping... Well, we get a lot of the junk and counterfeits, stuff designed specifically for selling to people looking to buy cheap imported crap. Better still, keep quality control low on it, and they'll buy another shortly.

 

It's been a while since I've been to China but the last time I was there, I spent quite a bit of time in one of their hardware stores (not a discount store).  What surprised me was that the stuff being sold into their consumer markets was significantly higher in quality (in general) than the stuff that was being shipped to us.  Even something like a light switch was far better quality, fit and finish than what shows up on the shelves of USA stores.  

It's easy to blame China for quality issues but it seems to me that a lot of blame should fall on the driving end of the supply chain. 

[arkie]

I can assure you that the ballistic missiles they are shooting off aren't made from stuff they sell at HF!!!!!

[gote]

Sorry. My mistake I did not read properly and believed it was the usual problem metric/imperial

[Kevo]

Been reading this old thread here and I’m wanting to make an old school machinist scraper for flattening a wood plane sole. Would a horse rasp work well for this? 

[ThomasPowers]

Yes, No, Maybe depending on the rasp; some of them are case hardened and so are the NO!   Asking a yes or no question about items that have been made for over 100 years all over the world by large numbers of makers is kinda imprecise...nicht wahr?

[Kevo]

Ok thanks for the info. I did read in another thread about testing a rasp to see if it’s suitable,I will try that and see what it turns out to be like. Thanks again!

[Stash]

I've made scrapers (for use on wood) from old saw blades. Cut them with a hacksaw or angle grinder- a shear will deform the edges too much. Clean the face with fine sandpaper, dress the edges with a file and raise a bur with a burnisher- I use a piece of polished drill rod.  For a straight scraper I make it  ~ 3x 4". For flattening plane soles, both wood and metal, I have had good luck just using sandpaper on a flat surface- I have used float glass, granite countertop scraps and my tablesaw top.

Steve