From Bearing to Floats

[jimi43]

I recently found one of those curved bearing scrapers at a bootfair.....

...made by Nicholson.....

...so good steel but since I don't intend to mould any babbitt (he he!) bearings anytime soon...I thought I would turn it into a float...which I will use!

So...clamp it into the corner vise...and hit it with a file....

It takes a bit of getting used to...filing so you get a flat trailing edge and I will probably refine it a bit with a needle file tomorrow but it came out remarkably well....

....progressively coarser to the front....

.....and it cuts fine....

....so...tomorrow I will make the angle more perpendicular....

...and it should slice better but for a cheap bootfair tool...it works as well as I would need it...for next to nothing.

I will have to look out for other shapes...

Jim

 

[andrewgcook]

Very nicely executed Jim. I'm all about modding tools to do something they were never intended for.

andy

 

[pedder]

Wow Jim you did it! Cool!

Cheers
Pedder

 

[AndyT]

Nice job, but surprising - I thought that bearing scrapers would be as hard as files, if not harder. Did you soften it first? Or have you completely trashed the file?

 

[jimi43]

Thanks for the comments guys.....

It surprised me also Andy...and especially a Nicholson scraper...but I used one of my Stubbs files on it and it worked fine and is still as good as when I started...though granted, I only used a corner.

I honestly thought I would have a hard time even scratching it so either Stubbs files are as top notch as we thought they would be or the scraper has lived a bad life somewhere and lost its temper....

Or.....maybe....they are case hardened...that would work...and I could cut through the top layer. In the end...they wouldn't have to be that hard to shave phosphor bronze or tin based "babbitt" bearing material (see I researched Kirk's thread don'tcha!)

Cheers

Jim

 

[Richard T]

That's a jolly fine thing you've done there Jim.
I think you're right about them not needing to be very hard to scrape bearing metal - probably just about saw hard? I'm sure that if it had been blade hard or case hardened, no file would have touched it.

Any recommendations on very small files btw? I have very few in my Dad's Swiss/French file collection that are up to getting into the corners of dovetails: Some tiny knife profile files are what I need ....

 

[bugbear]

I thought that bearing scrapers would be as hard as files

Indeed.

Especially "bearing scrapers" made by Nicholson

Quite a lot of older engineering books speak of making scrapers from old files...

BugBear

 

[jimi43]

Any recommendations on very small files btw? I have very few in my Dad's Swiss/French file collection that are up to getting into the corners of dovetails: Some tiny knife profile files are what I need ....

Well Richard...I suppose that the Stubbs has proven rather worth its metal ( :roll: )....and Douglas also bought a set and raves about them so I would recommend them. They are no longer in production so you have to get them from FleaBay....

STUBS TAPER SAW FILES

Check out the FleaBay supplier "other items" as he has loads of NOS files and was the one we bought our sets from

Hope this helps...

Jim

 

[Richard T]

Thanks Jim - the "needle barrette" look useful.