Tried grinding my own HSS tooling from an old file... that was a mistake

I figured I'd save $40 and make my own lathe tools from an old Nicholson file I found in the garage. Took me an hour with the bench grinder to get a shape that looked right, but the steel was way too hard and it chipped on the first pass cutting 6061 aluminum. Learned that not all hard steel makes good cutting edges - sometimes it's worth just buying the name brand blanks.

2 comments

2 Comments

taylor_young2d agoMost Upvoted

File's not really meant for that kind of grinding anyway.

laura_wright2d ago

Taylor, I tried using it for that once and ruined the whole thing.