[TheForge] Effective filing

[Peter Fels And Phoebe Palmer]

This has been a very helpful discussion...thank you all!
At a swap meet i picked up a very old file card with an indent in the 
handle for a file pick. The pick was a  soft iron wire about .032 with a 
loop in one end for a handle with the other end flattened into a blade. 
The end of the blade was cut across at about 70 * and pretty sharp. It 
would fit in the gullet between the file teeth easily and cleaned out 
jammed up "pinners" that were impossible to get out any other way. When 
I got a piece of pure iron, i made a few copies that hang next to my 
file collections....Pete F

Ralph Douglass wrote:

>Andrew Vida wrote:
>  
>
>>Steve Smith wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>When you do have to use one, a file card is only useful on a coarse
>>>enough file. If you have a fine file, it won't do a thing except dull
>>>the file.
>>>
>>>Instead, take a piece of brass or copper tubing and flatten the end. Use
>>>this as a tool to shove through the teeth. You want to push the copper
>>>along the file in the easiest possible direction, quite a different
>>>angle from when you are filing. You aren't trying to file the copper!
>>>
>>>The idea is that the copper is soft enough that it quickly shape itself
>>>to the trough you are running it along, and cleans all the junk out. It
>>>is really amazing how much better the file works afterward.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>        Another great tool for cleaning out fine files are finger nails, though
>>it can be painfully slow and rather hard on one's nails.
>>
>>        Never tried the copper idea, but it sounds like a good one for the
>>reference file.  I'll have to try it.
>>    
>>
>
>My nails are too soft. But I have found that a 30-30 shell works well
>once the open end is flattened.
>
>Ralph
>  
>