Fitting a wooden handle to a file

Files certainly can be resharpened - it's an acid etch. One school of thought (currently fashionable in the USA) is that new files aren't sharp enough until they've been resharpened, so some people send their new ones off straight away.

Mostly though you just need to buy decent files, which means Swiss Grobert ones. US Nicholsons are OK, are are old-stock Sheffield files, if they're still fresh. Chinese and Brazilian are anything but.

Reply to
Andy Dingley
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It's also not what I recommended. You seem to have misread/misunderstood my recommendation. The handle is the thing that strikes the surface, not the file.

Reply to
Steve Firth

Nicholsons is where I'm at, although they do have a factory in Brazil...

I take it you don't rate Bahco or CK, then?

Reply to
Dave Osborne

I've got a Bahco adjustable spanner. Quite a good tool, had it for years. Please don't tell me it is Chinese!

Reply to
David in Normandy

brainwave...

I suppose the *handles* wear whilst the file tang doesn't - so the only way to stop the handles loosening over time is to just rely on a friction fit which can be adjusted as the handle wears (any bolt/collar would fix the handle in relation to the tang, and it'd wobble all over the place as it wore)

Handles can be replaced cheaply, I suppose - but if the file's in heavy use then it would get annoying having to do that regularly.

Could that be it?

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules

Hardly. They are Swedish.

Reply to
Steve Firth

That'll be because you didn't specify which way up you were holding the file.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Not if it's an old one.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

It'll be because you made an assumption and didn't stop to think.

Reply to
Steve Firth

Check the manufacturing location on their recent products

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Quinton?

Reply to
Steve Firth

Were you not taught this method of putting a wooden handle on a file when you were a lad, or at any other time?

Reply to
Matty F

I've been told lots of ways, and I've also seen people using several others.

The ones that involve banging anything where your hand is near the tang aren't an example that ought to be copied.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

The practice of putting a file handle on a file and banging the handle onto some thing hard is common practice in engineering, so why do you say that it should not be coppied?

If you look at a file handle, you will see that it has a metal ferule at the file end of it. This is there to prevent the tang from coming out, through the handle, and biting your hand.

Dave

Reply to
Dave

Many people. when prompted to "bang a file" will grab it by the handle

- the obvious thing to grab it by. This may lead to injury. It's also a poor way to seat the handle.

You know, I'd never noticed that.

A tang is perfectly capable of coming out of the back of the handle (more likely, I would suggest). If the handle splits, and the file has a long enough tang, there's little to stop it.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Appart from the ferule at the front of the handle.

Tangs are sized to prevent this, as are file handles.

In the 40 years I have spent on the tools and then mentoring others as a team leader in development, I have never seen a file tange come anywhere near a hand.

Dave

Reply to
Dave

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Dave Osborne saying something like:

The tang is soft, so heating it as suggested would be ok.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

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