Reddit mentions of TTC 6 Piece Hardness Tester File Set

>When accepting a commission, do you take any sort of deposit up front?

Deposits are the number one reason why a maker gets into trouble. A deposit creates an unrealistic expectation of commitment between you and the customer and adds a slight burden of financial management.
Unless you are paying for a material to create a knife that you think would not sell to another buyer on an open market, i dont see a reason to take a deposit.


>How do you agree on a price?

You set a price and the customer agrees to it. If they dont, they walk away.

>What is your return policy?

How am I feeling on the day

>Do you itemize a bill for the customer?

I will list materials used on a reciept but mostly as a record that they can look to if they forget those details. This can be done with cards also

>How are your knives priced? I see a lot of makers charging 200+ for a knife.
Do you sell any knives for under $100? If so, what type and size are they typically?

A <$100 knife for me would be less than 5" long overall and have no scales.

>Do you send your knives off to get rockwell tested for hardness? If so, is it done so that you can advertise the hardness in the description of the knife? If not, do you even bother worrying about what the HRC is as long as it can pass the file test?

I have my heat treating done professionally. I can get them tested when I pick them up but i've had no reason to doubt the results since I started using them. Sending out purely for testing would not be cost effective.
If youre doing the hardening you should have some idea of rockwell hardness just for your own purposes. Get some rockwell files.
Frankly if youre selling at flea markets, talking about rockwell is a waste of time.
If someone who actually know wants to know they can ask and you can answer.

I doubt doing that would be very helpful.

What makes the SRAM ebike gear is 'ebike' is has wider ratios then typical cassette. So you can get the same range of speeds as a normal cassette, but with less shifting. It may be harder then normal cassettes, but that just means you'll blow through chains faster unless they are a matched pair.


If you want to eliminate the guesswork... You can do file tests to check the steel hardness. You don't need those special files though.. a regular file can tell you if the steel is hardened or not. A file will 'skate' over hard steel... were as with regular mild steel making deep marks is easy.

The problem is that bicycle drive trains are completely inadequate to handle the torque from DC motors. Throwing money at the problem isn't going to change the physical dimensions.


The reality is that cheap cassettes are the way to go because you are going to blow through them anyways. Usually more expensive in bicycle-land is just buying light weight. Light weight is the opposite what you want. You want as big and clunky and heavy as possible.

Even on children's motorized bikes they don't use 8-speed bicycle parts. They use 420 gears, which are the same pitch as bicycle gears, but significantly beefier.

Probably the best thing you can do is just to make sure that you replace your chain at the same time you replace your cassette.

A worn cassette will wear out a chain quickly. A worn out chain will wear out cassette quickly.

So always buying a new chain when you buy a new cassette will lead to longest life.

That seems suspicious to me. How was he going to level it?

Once the face is hardened, you need some pretty high end cutters to remove metal on a milling machine. Otherwise the cutter, not the anvil, will lose.

If he is skipping the mill and leveling it with a surface grinder, that suggests to me that he thinks it has been hardened.

Anyways, he should have access to a real hardness tester. If not a scientific rig, at least a set of these.

https://www.amazon.com/TTC-HTF-6S-PIECE-HARDNESS-TESTER/dp/B005701LAG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526341257&sr=8-1&keywords=hardness+test+files&dpID=617qYnT03XL&preST=_SX342_QL70_&dpSrc=srch