Filing Picks

[yucki8aby]

Hello

i am trying to make my own pickset and i was thinking, how difficult will it be to file a piece of hacksaw blade into a pick without tempering the metal first. i also do not have a grinder or a dremmel so everything has to be handmade. thanks in advance

[Wh0W4]

very difficult..and a long time..
i tried to file down a hacksaw blade and a almost cut my finger off, so if you do try it be very careful. i just hammer down bike spokes or wire coat hanger and then file and sand them in to a pick, it takes about 30 mis to make it.

[yucki8aby]

my coat hanger wire is so bloody hard that u can hammer it for 30 mins and it will only flatten abit.

[scorpiac]

Stainless steel wiper blade inserts (commonly used for making tension tools) also make excellent picks can be hand filed without tempering or any other treatment or preparation. I've done it many times while sitting watching TV with a set of needle files, then I finish them off with some 400 then 800 emery paper.

[Trip Doctor]

Yea if you wanna just use files, wiper inserts or street sweeper bristles are the way to go. You won't have the wide handle, but it will be a lot less metal to helplessly file. You could always attach a handle to it as well. Look at how Raimundo makes his bogota's (I think it's a sticky in the manual section).

[josh0094]

may i suggest buying a cheap rotory tool for about 20/40 dollars? as well as mettal working a coat hanger heres how to do it fast!

1) use a blowtorch/pen torch/ or if all else fails light ur charcol BBQ and drop in ur hanger for an hour

2) get a hard metal serfice. a vice would be ideal somthing thats flat metal and you can hammer on. even a scrap metal block. maybe a block of wood. but i wouldent recomend it.

3) once the metal is orenge or looks to be very hot imediately but it on ur hot service and hamer the living daylights outta it. (if it doesint flatin the first time repeat steps 2 and 3)

how i do it!

J

[fuzz]

metal rulers?
just cut them and file them down

[josh0094]

metal rulers?
just cut them and file them down

never heard of that one before. wouldent rulers bend easy?

[Trip Doctor]

If I'm thinking of the same metal rulers.. those would be very thick.

[josh0094]

If I'm thinking of the same metal rulers.. those would be very thick.

but still if they are the ones im thinking of then yes. that would take forever to file them.

[EvoIIIMan]

I have heard references to using the metal insert on the edge of wooden rulers before, but not in a long time, so I could be making this up. That would make more sense than a ~12"x1" metal ruler. The insert may not be wide enough, though.

[fredd3039]

Hello

i am trying to make my own pickset and i was thinking, how difficult will it be to file a piece of hacksaw blade into a pick without tempering the metal first. i also do not have a grinder or a dremmel so everything has to be handmade. thanks in advance

If you want to make it easier to file hacksaw blades then heat them with a propane plumbers torch until the metal glows dull cherry red then let the blade air cool completely. This will remove the temper. It is called annealing. Once you are finished filing you can heat the metal back to cherry red and quench it in boiling water then let it air cool. If you try to quench in cold water the steel will become brittle and snap easily. Also I should point out that there will be a tendancy for the metal to warp when you are re-tempering it.

[raimundo]

hacksaw blades come in lots of different manufacturers idea of the proper metal to use,

the metal is not hardened until after the teeth are cut and set, (angled)
on some new blades, you can see black heat color along the toothedges,

This flame hardening is only applied to the saw edge, not to the whole blade, the rest of the blade is probably in a metal jaw while the hardening of the teeth is done, so that metal jaw would be something a a heatsink depending on how much mass it has. It would also tend to heat up during a day of gripping blades during hardening, but it would heat only to a temp that equalizes the heat sink and the heat radiated from the heat sink, this means that while the jaw that protects the back of the blade from becoming hard and brittle, it is still probably hot, just not really hot.

look at your blade, if it has not been painted all the way, you can see the black color of the hardening flame along the teeth,

hardness is brittleness, so the back of the blade is not hardened, it must flex without cracking.

[vitti]

To answer the question of how hard it will be to make picks with nothing but a file, not that hard. More time consuming, yes. I have made a couple of picks by file alone (bored at night and neighbors would not appreciate power tools). I would say it took an average of 30 minutes per pick to file out the shape.

As raimundo pointed out, the saw teeth are the hardest part of the blade. They will of course be the hardest part to file. I found it is easier to use a fine or super fine file on the teeth than a medium or coarse file. Medium and course files tend to bounce/skip over the hardened teeth without making much of a dent. You wont likely find a fine cut file any larger than a "needle file" set at a local hardware store. The needle files work fine but if you order a large super fine cut file online you'll make shorter work of those teeth. Once you are through the teeth, go back to a medium (course files on a thin metal edge don't work well, they grab and bind more than they cut) and form the basic shape. Then go back to your fine cut files and finish the job.

Files come in greatly varying quality. In general you get what you pay for. Cheaper files will dull quickly when filing hardened steel. Higher quality/more expensive files will last much longer.

And just for reference when buying files:

Bastar.d cut (language filter doesn't like that word) is rougher than rough cut, you really never need this file for metal. Don't bother with a rough cut either, it wont work well for making picks.

If the cuts are listed by number (#0, #6, etc), these are swiss cut files and my favorite. The higher the number, the finer the cut. I like to use a #7 for the teeth and a #4 for general shaping. A #8 will leave a very smooth surface that requires next to no polishing but cuts very slowly.

A good set of needle files will cost you about $30+. The cheap $5 sets will work but dull quickly and break easily. Look at jeweler's supply sites for good quality larger files. You'll pay $10+ per file but they're worth it if you plan to use them extensively.

You wont likely need a file card, to clean the files of embedded metal shavings, when filing hardened steel but if you plan to use them on brass (keys and locks) then you will need a file card.

Hope that helps.

[raimundo]

I agree with vitti but think about the teeth as a hard strip along one side, the grinder if you have one is the prefered why to get through them, but if cutting by hand tools, perhaps you could clamp the hacksaw blade between two boards with a C clamp and then cut under the toothy edge from one end and simply cut through the un hardened metal beneath the teeth and remove that part as a strip.

this would mean that you only have to break through the hardened metal in one place to remove the toothy strip. It will save the sharp teeth on those valuable files.

Don't leave your files in the toolbox without putting sleeves of some paper or plastic as some of them come in.

Toolboxes are full of hardened metal, even other files, and this will tend to knock the sharp off the files sooner if you dont protect them.