Filing Guides

[niall Y]

I used a couple of bits of ally angle for years as soft jaws on my smaller vice. It's out of service ATM as I've got a bigger one. I cut, and mitred the ends, and bent them round to stop them getting knocked off easily. They're pretty rough now, but if they were kept just for filing, they're be OK.

Hmm... I'm wondering if I couldn't adapt your idea, and simply glue on some hardened spring steel strips to the top face of the aluminium angle . Much the same way that Aluminium thicknessing beds on planers have a stainless plate glued to the surface.

 

[Amplidyne]

You could just make them out of light steel angle.
As already said, it's only a guide, you'd have to file quite definitely for a bit to make any real difference to wide steel surfaces.
As I've said before, I'm not keen on running files onto hardened steel personally. It does damage the teeth.

 

[niall Y]

You could just make them out of light steel angle.
As already said, it's only a guide, you'd have to file quite definitely for a bit to make any real difference to wide steel surfaces.
As I've said before, I'm not keen on running files onto hardened steel personally. It does damage the teeth.

All my files, over the years, transition from from best, to second best. so I wouldn't be at a loss to find a, not so-precious one, to use for that last flush cut. Not that I don't nurse along certain of them, that I reserve for specific tasks.

I came to a decision earlier today to purchase a pair of magnetic aluminium ,jaw protectors. When they arrive I will experiment with surfacing them with hardened steel tops.

I will post, with pictures, how I get on later.

 

[Amplidyne]

All my files, over the years, transition from from best, to second best. so I wouldn't be at a loss to find a, not so-precious one, to use for that last flush cut. Not that I don't nurse along certain of them, that I reserve for specific tasks.

I came to a decision earlier today to purchase a pair of magnetic aluminium ,jaw protectors. When they arrive I will experiment with surfacing them with hardened steel tops.

I will post, with pictures, how I get on later.

I've got some of those aluminium magnetic jaws. They work well.
Be interesting to know how you get on.

 

[--Tom--]

Easy enough to harden some 01 ground flat stock and then epoxy it onto the aluminium. Carbide is nicer though, and has become relatively cheap

 

[Terrytpot]

We were even allowed to use the lathes at 11 years old, which must have been nightmare for the teacher.

you've just racked me with guilt reading this..I may have been the little **** who collected empty cartons of Ribena in his locker for the evil plan of torturing one of my college lecturers during a period in the machine shop. In hindsight I was no doubt led astray by an associate whom was left with half of my empty stash at one end of the room whilst I retained the rest at the opposite end of the room. Mr Bradbury was at this stage somewhat past his prime and was surely well into retirement but for whatever reason still continued trying to pass on his no doubt extensive knowledge and wisdom to the engineers of the future. Some might say he did in fact look a little frail, was somewhat hard of hearing with eyesight that required some assistance and had an easily excited temper that led to some impressive alterations to his appearance due to his , I'm assuming, elevated blood pressure.
There is a possibility that I may have waited for Mr Bradbury to reach the ideal position roughly half way between myself and my co-conspirator before launching the cause of my guilt. You may not be aware but an inverted empty drink carton placed upon the floor can be stamped upon , and with no easy escape for the confined air , pressure increases until a tipping point is reached and the sides of the carton rupture releasing said trapped air with an accompanying rather loud noise. Obviously this noise will attract the attention of anyone entrusted with the health and safety of a room full of little darlings as a matter of some urgency. Unfortunately Mr Bradbury was quite incapable of determining quite where the noise had come from and to whom some form of peril was affecting when the noise emanated again but from the opposite direction, worse for him, whilst trying to determine the source , the original perpetrator had enough time to "reload" and "detonate" totally unobserved. Repeat the above process until all 12 cartons had been "deployed" and Mr Bradbury had elevated way beyond his normal annoyed persona to one of apoplectic with the appropriate hue of magenta to match. If you ever find yourself in Mr Bradbury's unfortunate position I suggest you don't look for the culprit amongst those rolling about laughing but instead pay closer attention to the two individuals looking rather shocked and surprised who will probably be employing tremendous self restraint in not joining in with the hysterics...at least not until after the lesson!

 

[niall Y]

Here is an update to the file guides I decided to "make", or should I say "assemble", from the aluminium, vice jaws I purchased. In the end I decided to use tungsten carbide to face these.

The first hiccup was that the 2mm x 12mm x 150mm tungsten carbide turned out to be 3mm too long. So I had to invest in a silicon carbide wheel for my grinder. Even with this it took roughly 30 passes to remove about 1/3 of a millimetre. In the end, it was a lot of grinding to remove 6mm of stock.

The tops of the aluminium guides had a slight profile which I removed with a file to give me a flat enough area to glue to. The carbide facings were stuck in position with PVC tape, off their back edge to ensure that they remained correctly placed when being glued,This also allowed me to hinge them back to degrease the gluing surfaces with acetone They were set back a tad from the front edge as well, to allow for any slight compression of the fibre facings when in use. I ended up using standard Araldite to glue them, which seems to be holding up okay.

Following are some photos of the guides. And them being used to dimension some nickel silver blanks.