Filing rest for vise

Filing ist not the poor man’s alternative to a mill. More often than not sawing and filing is faster than milling. Filing means better workflow - less set up - less swarf - and no razor-sharp chips. Filing is flexibility: Not every surface needs the same precision, not every surface needs the same nice appearance. And milling edges is time wasted.

Yet the work stress is considerable. As with forging or horseback gymnastics one has no second try. Most annoying is the immanent danger of rocking the file resulting in curved or inclined sufaces. So any anti-rocking-aid is welcome.

I have seen a number of filing rests for turned parts still clamped in the lathe chuck; to file flats or hex nuts.

But I have never seen a filing rest for a vise. Perhaps it would be too complex to adjust.

So I started with something simple and doable; which is - by the way - the royal road to any novelty.

https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net/hmt_filing_fin.pdf

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Having all the tools and machines to make stuff I still do a fair amount of filing.
Especially for tuning a one-off part rather than doing a machine setup.
I vote this as Tool of the Year.

Great Idea, I can see this would be useful in a number of places.

A multi axis mount on a bench vise would be nice to have too.


Another advantage with filing, there is just something satisfying about a nice sharp file and a solid vise holding the work.
At least for me. I like to do chisel work too, so I'm probably not typical.

I use this setup to sharpen my wood chisels:
Attachment 40080
It is just a simple wooden frame, with a steel clamp to hold the chisel. This clamp can be rotated to adjust the filing angle roughly. Fine angle adjustments are done by moving the chisel forward / backward within the clamp. The angle I use for my chisels is about 25 degrees. Kitchen knives I sharpen to a bevel angle of maybe 7 degrees, using a different clamping arrangement.
The file I use is a long stainless steel rod with a wooden handle, holding two movable clamps. The file(s) itself is diamond, with grits from 80 to 2000, plus a leather strop, available from e.g. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005...d81085b6b22-17.
There is, obviously, no reason that the file needs to be diamond. Any steel file will do as readily, using clamps suitable to the file's geometry.
In use, the major difference is that I can use (nearly) the full length of the file, I am not limiting the usable file stroke by where the vise permits me to put the roller. And, by having a larger file stroke, I file faster (more of the file clears the workpiece so that the swarf will fall off) and more accurately (there is less play in the setup to mess up the filing angle)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by uv8452

So I started with something simple and doable; which is - by the way - the royal road to any novelty.

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And then you compare your own design with what others have done, and you learn to do even better . . .

And here I have to take to task Jon and Altair, who try their utmost best to obscure where the clips they put on homemadetools.com come from. And thus, they limit the learning potential homemadetools.com provides, and its usefulness. Instead, they add lots of clutter which is, ultimately, GARBAGE.

Dear CanBeDone: Some time ago I thought of a file extension too - but I overlooked the advantage of the bigger stroke. Thank you.

Another advantage with filing, there is just something satisfying about a nice sharp file and a solid vise holding the work.

Dear Moldyjim: I believe than many of us like the mystery to work with a nice sharp file and a solid vise, not to forget knife-edge square and others. While precision filing doesn't leave brain capacity, 'material removing filing' (like hatching in a drawing) helps the subconcious to solve problems.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CanBeDone

And here I have to take to task Jon and Altair, who try their utmost best to obscure where the clips they put on homemadetools.com come from. And thus, they limit the learning potential homemadetools.com provides, and its usefulness. Instead, they add lots of clutter which is, ultimately, GARBAGE.

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Unfortunately, most of the GIFs we find are unsourced, and we find them reposted on social media like reddit, TikTok, or Imgur. If we see a source YouTube video for a GIF, we'll usually include it. Some of them are watermarked with a YT source url in the corner, and sometimes a forum member will recognize a GIF and have more info.

My favorite this year was a collection of hundreds of Chinese industrial GIFs that I bumped into on Imgur, that you've probably seen re-posted on the forum. They were completely unsourced, and could've been Chinese propaganda for all I know, but they were a great find.

Nice idea that I hadn't thought of. But maybe that's because I normally do not file big stuff. But I filed this away ! When I went to tech school, the first class was how to use a file. And we got tested on that. So yea, at 71 I still go to the files often.

For a forum that exerts as much effort in scraping the internet for all marketable amateur ideas, I find it interesting that for three years naught has been made of Japan's propensity for elevating the use of all hand tools to a religious devotation. Case in point, what IMHO is the penultimate display of hand filing artistry:

https://youtu.be/jqG1dyBddR8

While living in that beautiful culture for several years I was fortunate enough to witness two "in company" competitions of this kind of "arcane skill." Imagine what they can do with well maintained machinery. ( all of their machines only get more accurate with usage. To them, maintenance is also a religious devotion.

Watch. Learn. Rinse. Repeat.

Yup, similar but not extensive as that. My first class on using files had me file a block of unfinished metal into a block of finished metal with specific measurements. Then when done we had to drill a hole and tap it. Then we had to finish off a rod to a specific thickness and length. Then we had to use a die on the rod so that the end of the rod could be screwed in but must be flush with the bottom of the block. You could not use a file to make it flush. I got it right the first time but as it took days, I had nightmares. Any mistakes required you to start all over again. I still have that somewhere. So I can appreciate that video.

Dear Gargoyle,
thank you for the video. I saw some more of them but didn’t find them anymore. What scares me is the filed pieces under the feeler gauge.

Devotion to hand tools is (was) decisive to the tool makers trade. The apprentice learns 2 prerequisites to be a master: 1. To know the importance of 1/2 thousanths of an inch and 2. to be resistant to fatigue and boredom. Remember that 60 years ago the dies for rotor and stator laminations were (after a rough milling) filed by hand;Attachment 4011912 or 24 or 36 identical shapes, in some cases already hardened. And even when the dies were dimensionally correct: The dies of certain toolmakers lasted, say, 150.000 strokes, whereas the dies of others lasted just 100.000. It was a ‚game‘ of competition and reputation.