I have made decent knives from Nicholson files. I annealed them, forged/ground the blades, normalized once, then heated to non-magnetic and quenched in olive oil, and tempered. If you can get ahold of some I would suggest a faster quench oil, if treated like 1095 I think you would get somewhat better results than I did.
It can be worthwhile if you are willing to experiment a little but unless you like the novelty of it or can get files for free it is probably just as cheap if not cheaper to buy some annealed 1084, and you can save yourself the step of annealing.