"These tools, simple and unimportant as they may seem... to those who never enter an artisan's workshop, are among the most note-worthy articles made of steel. They are the working-tools by which every other kind of working-tool is in some degree fashioned. Whether a man is making a watch or a steam-engine, a knife or a plough, a pin or a coach, he would be brought to a stand if he had not files at his command. It may be a file with a hundred serrations to an inch, or with six or eight; it may have straight cuts like most files, or angular holes like a rasp; it may be two inches long, or a yard long; it may be round, or half-round, or triangular, or square, or flat; blunt or pointed, straight or curved; but a file of some sort or other will be found in almost every workshop."
Making Files in Sheffield, Early 1840s
For an excellent guide to file making, please see this site:
Ian W. Wright - Files and Filemaking
One man's family heritage of file cutting, in the context of Sheffield's industrial history:
A Filecutter's Hammer from the Hawley Collection
File cutter's premises, Netherthorpe, Sheffield, 1905
YouTube - The making of Liogier hand-stitched wood rasps
YouTube - cutting rasps by hand at Auriou Toolworks in France
YouTube - Filecutting
Early US file cutting machines:
WK Fine Tools - 1905 Making of Fine Toolmakers Files Machinery
WK Fine Tools - Making Files at Disston 1921
Several descriptions of file cutting machines:
Google Books - Machinery's Encyclopedia
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| Heller Brothers machine |
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