[QUOTE=Mavigogun;173209] snip) I’ve been predisposed to eschew the vixen, but will just have to come to terms with it. (snip
My experience as a 20yr. old apprentice was a matter of choosing wisely.
If I chose well, then I was rewarded with deep insights, personal events/stories, and shared experiences.
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traditional metal-working files (no plastic, no wood), American patterns/Euro patterns. (w/tang.)
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Vixen-style "curved tooth body files" (no tang)
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Two old Vixen files, made by Vixen File Co., patent-holder of the design bearing their name.
Forged steel file holder, top, mfgd "PLOMB Tool MFG Co." 1930's.
The Vixen tanged 14in. file is the best file I ever used, (over the 22 years that I shoved and dragged it over...um...a thousand miles, on a hundred fine autos. It is an 8T on one side and a 12T opposite. Sharped it professionally 4 times. Tooth angle was approaching 80deg and only plowing the surface, instead of whisking off weightless feathers. So it became "holder of experiences."
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Shaped aluminum, .050" 3003, being "edge filed" with special file/holder combo. Mfgd Austria, (17th gen family file maker/descendant runs the company today.) (Advises Aus. nat'l ski team on edge sharpening.)
might note that this bottom surface has been "dressed" to minimize roughness .... this also magnified tool marks ... like the measured rhythmic stomps of the Air Power Hammer - opposite the repeated-arch cascades of the old thumbnail Pullmax shrink dies. (1994)
(Aluminum Examples previously = .050" 3003, 1965 289 Cobra ...
and .040" 3003, from 1957 Ferrari factory race-team car.)
................ and ...
Were I to choose poorly, I was left to menial tasks, happily in my lonsesome.
The five years I apprenticed days, while working nights in a resto shop, and weekends re-invigorating an old farm truck forged an intense educational elliptic to my life trajectory.
It's wise for me to make correct effort to choose well.