Greetings and comments on a good file

Hello to all,
I've been a lurker on the old forum for a good while and I recently decided to join, thank you all.
I wanted to share with you my Stella Bianca bastard file, this model has a long cutting surface, very coarse teeth pattern, and according to the maker, is hardened to about 64 hrc.
I bought it after reading a topic on the old forum
http://www.cliffstamp.com/knives/forum/read.php?17,64834,64834][/url]
and I used it to reprofile a new Rinaldi hatchet, which only had a really thick and obtuse grind.
Even of fairly hard steel that dulled my previous file in an
heartbeat (silicon manganese tool steel, about 58hrc), it cut fast and clean, and in an hour or so I obtained a really nice cutting edge and a pile of perfect shavings, the file was still like new. In my limited experience, I've never seen a file working this good on hardened steel.
Next I used the file to regrind and thin a carbon steel Green River knife I handled from a blank a while ago, and it obviously worked perfectly fine on the even softer steel (54 to 56 according to the maker), but when I tried to do the same job on a Victorinox kitchen knife (stainless steel, about the same hardness AFAIK) the file started to skate and wasn't biting almost at all and the removal rate was poor.
I thought that maybe even minimal carbide content was enough to considerably slow down even the best files, simple testing done on similar hardness 12c27 (carbide volume and size more akin to simple carbon steel, the file hogged steel pretty weel compared to the similar but maybe more coarse grained X50CrMoV15) and on Spyderco VG10 (no bite at all) seems to confirm that.
That discovery was a bit of a bummer, but still a very good tool to manually reprofile any kind of carbon steel blade in my opinion, way faster than any stone I've ever had.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2022 10:57AM by Millscale.

Is it possible that the Victorinox kitchen knife is simpy flexing when you’re using the file? That’s the first thing I thought of, that the knife is flexing and he can’t get enough pressure on it to cut.

I don't believe it's possible, because the blade was CA glued to a flat piece of steel, with only the edge exposed (very stable and quickly undone pouring some acetone on the joint). Sometimes a file stroke is not angled correctly and the teeth cannot cut cleanly, or the first couple of strokes slide on forging scale or dirt , but usually one can figure out how to make it work, adjusting the stroke direction and/or angle, in my case (especially on the Delica) the file was sliding a lot and the metal was deforming and burnishing instead of being cut, saving for the occasional tearing scratch on the softer stainless (hard corner of the file). Trying to file the spine, concentrating force on a very small surface, gave some result, but some of the file's teeth were reflecting light after a couple dozen passes. The fresh side of the file didn't impress me either.
Maybe I should have also tried a less coarse file, like a smooth cut, but I admit the result was a bit surprising.
I tried to find topics on many forums about filing hardened stainless, without much success, but
I know Stefan Wolf (Rip) once reground his spyderco salt using a file, I don't have any H1 steel knife, but I know for sure that steel doesn't have much carbide, if any at all.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2022 09:55PM by Millscale.

Millscale,
Greetings and welcome to the forum!
I have a few files, a well used Grobet that I bought new, a very nice Mercer two sided very coarse and coarse file, and a big 12" mill bastard that is just labeled "China'. I bought all three from the same local hardware store. I use them for sharpening my machetes and hatchets.

Thanks jasonstone20!
In addition to this 12" I also have a couple of Spanish 8" bastard cut files and a 6" smooth finishing file (Bellota brand, very common here in Italy, good performance).
Also a small selection of needle and chainsaw files.
About the use, as you said they are very handy for tools like axes, sickles, billhooks etc, they work faster than even the coarsest stones and overheating is never an issue. I usually follow up with a Sic stone for evening the scratch pattern though, almost never used a file only edge