Where to buy gunsmithing tools
- Thread starter benelliguy
- Start date
crasheralex
Regular
- Location
- Cambridge, On
Look at kbc they should have any tools your looking for
verminaard
CGN Regular
- Location
- SW Bantario
The problem isn't finding the tools. They are available online through several sources and at Canadian Tire and Princess Auto to name a few.
Your big problem will be finding good quality files.
Go online and search the sites of well known tool makers like Nicholson and Starrett.
Starrett Precision Measuring Tools and Saw Blades Since 1880
www.starrett.com/
Starrett: Micrometers, Gages, Machinist Tools, Force Measurement, Precision Granite, Video Measurement, Optical Comparators, Band Saw, Jobsite Tools..
Your big problem will be finding good quality files.
Go online and search the sites of well known tool makers like Nicholson and Starrett.
Starrett Precision Measuring Tools and Saw Blades Since 1880
www.starrett.com/
Starrett: Micrometers, Gages, Machinist Tools, Force Measurement, Precision Granite, Video Measurement, Optical Comparators, Band Saw, Jobsite Tools..
Search "Grobet File Company". There are a couple mail order outfits in Canada using their catalog. Check out ottofrei, perrinwatchparts, and gessweincanada, too. Be sitting, when you start to see what a GOOD file costs! Buy a few good files, and I guarantee you WILL take decent care of them, and you WILL lose your mind when someone abuses them!
Last set of Swiss Files I bought, were around $12 per file. Cheap, and on sale at the time!
Lose the term "gunsmithing". You are searching for tools. Wherever you can find them!
If you get in to Edmonton, like as not, you want to stop at Bedrock Supply, and peruse their offerings. If you can walk around there and not have ideas start going off inside your head like firwroks, you have no imaginatin whatsoever and should be an actuary (someone that is good with numbers, but without enough people skills to be an accountant!)
Cheers
Trev
Hacking on the accountants!
Last set of Swiss Files I bought, were around $12 per file. Cheap, and on sale at the time!
Lose the term "gunsmithing". You are searching for tools. Wherever you can find them!
If you get in to Edmonton, like as not, you want to stop at Bedrock Supply, and peruse their offerings. If you can walk around there and not have ideas start going off inside your head like firwroks, you have no imaginatin whatsoever and should be an actuary (someone that is good with numbers, but without enough people skills to be an accountant!)
Cheers
Trev
Hacking on the accountants!Search "Grobet File Company". There are a couple mail order outfits in Canada using their catalog. Check out ottofrei, perrinwatchparts, and gessweincanada, too. Be sitting, when you start to see what a GOOD file costs! Buy a few good files, and I guarantee you WILL take decent care of them, and you WILL lose your mind when someone abuses them!
Last set of Swiss Files I bought, were around $12 per file. Cheap, and on sale at the time!
Lose the term "gunsmithing". You are searching for tools. Wherever you can find them!
If you get in to Edmonton, like as not, you want to stop at Bedrock Supply, and peruse their offerings. If you can walk around there and not have ideas start going off inside your head like firwroks, you have no imaginatin whatsoever and should be an actuary (someone that is good with numbers, but without enough people skills to be an accountant!)
Cheers
Trev
Sweet. I'm in Edmonton lots for work so I'll pop in. Thanks for the help gents
Sadly Nicholson isn't what it used to be. Or at least the garden variety sizes and shapes are not what they used to be. My recent Nicholson files are no better than some of the better but still poor imports.
Your best bet for good small files is outfits like Grobet as mentioned.
You'll also want a good assortment of stone files in various grits for jobs from roughing to final polishing. These are the round, square and triangular slip stones that Brownells and other better tool companys like KBC sell. These are essential for working with stoning guides such as used on internal part jigs for guns like the 1911's.
Sideline lament- Oh how I wish that Sandvik still made files. Or if they do that I could find a supplier that still carries them. I bought about 10 Sandvik files about 25 years ago from Hanson Tools out here. They were not cheap but they were not totally out of this world expensive either. But MAN! are they good files. The Sandvik lathe file is still going strong and might just make it until I'm too old and decrepit to use a lathe. The bench files I bought are still good. I finally wore out and ruined one after about 10 years from "finding" too many hardened parts the bad way. But the same cut and size second file is still doing well.
Truly I find that they are better than any Nicholson file I've ever had. Sadly I can't find any reference to anyone selling them any longer. Much like good tap wrenches made by various outfits like Butterfield and Moore&Wright the world has gone down the toilet and embraced the cheap junk imports.
I blame it on the fact that too many treat a file as "metal sandpaper" instead of the proper cutting tool it really is. The old world master machinists must be rolling in their graves at what has happened to the hand working skills that were taken for granted in their day.
Your best bet for good small files is outfits like Grobet as mentioned.
You'll also want a good assortment of stone files in various grits for jobs from roughing to final polishing. These are the round, square and triangular slip stones that Brownells and other better tool companys like KBC sell. These are essential for working with stoning guides such as used on internal part jigs for guns like the 1911's.
Sideline lament- Oh how I wish that Sandvik still made files. Or if they do that I could find a supplier that still carries them. I bought about 10 Sandvik files about 25 years ago from Hanson Tools out here. They were not cheap but they were not totally out of this world expensive either. But MAN! are they good files. The Sandvik lathe file is still going strong and might just make it until I'm too old and decrepit to use a lathe. The bench files I bought are still good. I finally wore out and ruined one after about 10 years from "finding" too many hardened parts the bad way. But the same cut and size second file is still doing well.
Truly I find that they are better than any Nicholson file I've ever had. Sadly I can't find any reference to anyone selling them any longer. Much like good tap wrenches made by various outfits like Butterfield and Moore&Wright the world has gone down the toilet and embraced the cheap junk imports.
I blame it on the fact that too many treat a file as "metal sandpaper" instead of the proper cutting tool it really is. The old world master machinists must be rolling in their graves at what has happened to the hand working skills that were taken for granted in their day.
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I am having no problem with Nicholson. Where are u purchasing them from http://www.nicholsontool.com/
R
R
- Location
- West Quebec
^^^^this would be where I'd check first
WereWeasel
CGN Regular
- Location
- Albert County, N.B
Try Acklands or McMaster Carr you can buy a China brand set of needle files for under $20; they cut okay but they are brittle and can break in your hand. The European counterparts are well over the $100 range I've had limited use with them and could not tell the difference; they are needle files after all not a rasp.
I agree on the Nicholson files are not at all the files they were 5 years ago. The Brazilian made ones are very inconsistently made, spalting and teeth tear out readily. Our shop switched to an off brand, why pay double the price for the same product stamped "Brazil".
Norton puts out great stones all shapes and sizes.
I agree on the Nicholson files are not at all the files they were 5 years ago. The Brazilian made ones are very inconsistently made, spalting and teeth tear out readily. Our shop switched to an off brand, why pay double the price for the same product stamped "Brazil".
Norton puts out great stones all shapes and sizes.
Sandvik still makes files, in Portugal.
Today this seems to be the norm for users of hand tools all over. They got used to the crappy Asian knockoffs and were willing to replace them regularly because they are cheap. Some of them are lucky to actually finish a job let alone last a lifetime. When I'm at yard sales looking for GOOD screwdrivers I always keep my eye out for Sandvick and Starrett files of different sizes/shapes and cutting edges. Same goes for rasps and chisels.
Good tools that stay sharp when properly used are no longer understood or sought after in this throwaway age.
I made a living with my tools and often the tool quality made a huge difference between a good quality job and a ho hum job.
Some of the folks I worked with had tool pouches/boxes full of the poorest/cheapest tools available. It showed. Rounded off bolt heads and nuts, galled screw slots, scrapes on the metal where the screwdriver slipped off or the blades broke on Philips heads etc. The list goes on.
Colonel Mustard
Regular
- Location
- Cochrane, AB
Gunsmith Tool Kit
As a basic kit, this is excellent - the bench block in particular is pretty difficult to find. There's plenty of room in the case to add extra tools (one triangle file is included).
https://colonelmustard.ca/products/essential-gun-smith-tool-kit
As a basic kit, this is excellent - the bench block in particular is pretty difficult to find. There's plenty of room in the case to add extra tools (one triangle file is included).
https://colonelmustard.ca/products/essential-gun-smith-tool-kit
As a basic kit, this is excellent - the bench block in particular is pretty difficult to find. There's plenty of room in the case to add extra tools (one triangle file is included).
https://colonelmustard.ca/products/essential-gun-smith-tool-kit
Jesus. For that money, just buy the junk outta the bin at Princess Auto. Cheaper, same quality. No fancy cloth case, though.
You can do better, and pay less, for quality tools, if you start from the basis that pretty much everything you see that has the word "Gunsmith" in the title, is pretty much crap!
I say pretty much, because there are a very few exceptions to this general rule, but pretty much, if someone is selling a kit of some sort of tools that is adorned with the word, like as not they are buying cheap crap and selling it to guys that don't know any better.
I buy and use/destroy my fair share of cheap tools. Nothing better than a $9 wrench set, when you know that the main reason you are buying it is because you are planning on cutting, bending, spindling, welding on, or otherwise mutilating it, or parts of it, in order to get a job done. Good for doing what you would not want to do with good tools.
I won't claim that the kit above will not provide service, just that if you expect to get reasonable use out of the tools, you will do better buying decent quality ones.
A hockey puck with a couple slots cut in it makes a pretty good bench block. Drill a few holes too. Corian counter top scraps too. Or UHMW blocks from Lee Valley, or wherever you can scrounge the stuff.
Put together your own kit of tools, based on the work you actually need them for.
Cheers
Trev
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