I know some people make knives from old files. I have some old Nicholson pipeliner files that have damaged and rolled teeth. I'm thinking about annealing it and grinding down the tang to make a graver (may have to forge down part of the body behind the tang so as to have enough length for an engraving chisel). My question is, would file steel be good enough to work for this application? 

Edit: obviously would need hardened and tempered afterwards

The smart alec answer is "It cut metal before, didnt it?"

It's a likely 'yes'... with caveats.

Plane taking off now,  gotta go!

Take a look at this thread:

 

Hey, thanks a bunch guys. And I like the smart alec answer because I never thought about it like that but it makes sense!