Greetings to everyone. A trick I learnd years ago for sharpening
files. Pour used pickel ( I use sodium bisulfate ) into a glass
beaker. Put your files in, and let sit overnight at room
temperature. Remove the next day, and give them a quik dip in an
ultrasonic. I have broght alot of files back to life that others
were ready to discard. Try it and tell me what you think.
Hi Chris We do it with files and the odd bur but we use dilute nitric
acid which only takes a few minutes but has the same effect. While we
are on the subject another couple of tips: I always make my pickle
tweezers out of silver ( I still use sulphuric, Sparex seems to react
with my throat ) I am still using a pair I made 20 years ago and they
are still as good as new. We also use patches of old denim jeans
rapped around the polishing spindle to tripoli or rouge the inside of
rings. Works much better than any felts I have ever used plus it
doesn’t cost anything ( as long as you use an old pair of jeans).
Chris Hackett
Chris,
I have sharpening files often, but I used an other mixture, I like to
be in a hurry. First clean the files with a steel brush an degrease
them in hot sodium carbonate with a brush Rinse them in water, and put
them in a mixture of: 7 part water, 3 parts concentrated sulfuric acid
and 1 part concentrated nitric acid. A few minutes is enough to make
them useful again. After etching put them in the sodium carbonate
again to remove rests of acids.
An other simple way is to etch the files, (after cleaning and
decreasing ) in 25% hydrochloric acid but this takes a day.
Martin Niemeijer
Martin.niemijer@hetnet.nl