The Gun Counter

You left out Metabo. They're the gold standard among fabricators.

I did hear that Milwaukee and Dewalt grinders aren't as good as they used to be, with milwaukee falling farther in quality, but your mention of Makita is the first i'd heard about that involving them.

What is the advantage of making a knife out of an old file vs making one out of a piece of old leaf spring or old sawblade? Hardness? Flex?

Windy Wilson wrote:What is the advantage of making a knife out of an old file vs making one out of a piece of old leaf spring or old sawblade? Hardness? Flex?

Both. Wear resistance, too. The different steel the original item was made out of will determine what it's most advantageous to remake into.

Leaf springs are better to remake into something that needs to be flexible and/or withstand shock. Maybe something you might chop with. Think sword, or khukuri.

Files are made from tool steel that's designed to be hard and wear resistant, if more brittle. So you turn it into a smaller knife that holds an edge forever.

The common alloy in files is 1095, which is generally very hard, making for a very sharp knife.

The common alloy in truck leaf leaf springs is 5160, which isn't nearly as hard enable, but is both cheap and tough, very important with large utility blades like bowies and camp knives. If you can Google around, you can get a rough idea what you're working with.

And oh, after watching AvE videos, I can no longer recommend metabo, it seems the 100 dollar handled Makita is the way to go.