Bahco files?

jonathan creason

Well-Known Member
I ended up with a decent lot of used Bahco files a couple of weeks ago. I had never heard of this brand before, and I can't seem to find much info on them. They're too dull for draw filing, so if they're decent steel I'd like to turn them into some blades. Anybody tried making a knife out of one of these files, and if so what type of heat treat did you have good results from?
 
I took one of the files out to the garage last night and clamped it in the vise. One quick pull and it snapped easily, so I assume it's a decent hardened steel. After that I fired up the coffee can forge and stuck a couple of pieces in. I started on a couple of kiridashis, but had to cut things short to go feed my young'uns. The steel didn't seem to move nearly as easily as the 1084 that I'm used to. I had to get this stuff HOT before I took it to the anvil.
 
there probably 1095 or the European equivalent EN9.

but i could be wrong
 
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Thanks Rusty, I think I'm going to try a few kiridashis with it and see how well I can heat treat it. If those work out good I'll try a few bigger blades out of them. For those of you that regularly use files for knife stock, do you file or grind the teeth off the file before hammering? I've seen several people that say you should to keep stress risers down, but then I've seen others that hammer away. Do you think it makes much difference?
 
The times I have made knives from files I have just forged them the way they are. One thing you may want to do before you try making a blade out of them is to see if they will harden up after you have annealed them. Pretty sure a lot of the cheaper files are just case hardened. Case hardened means that only the surface is hardened. I ran into some wood chipper blades several years ago that were case hardened and could not figure out why they didn't harden up and that was the reason.
 
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