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Once all the high and low spots were evened out, I switched to a finer file in the Veritas jointer/edger to ensure the edge was 90 degrees to the faces.
The finished edge:
Now you’ll need to pretend you’re cutting teeth in a very wide rip saw. Tooth geometry is perpendicular-perpendicular, i.e., no rake and no fleam. Todd recommends 8-10 TPI and spacing the teeth by eye. He makes the point that the teeth don’t need to be spaced exactly evenly. The only thing that’s critical is that the tips of the teeth be the same height. He has some other good stuff to say on the tape, as well, so get it if you want to know more… Coat the edge you just finished jointing with layout fluid—it will help you see the flats on top of the teeth as you file them. Todd says that there’s no need to harden the steel if you don’t want to—that you’ll just need to sharpen the float more often. That’s what I did for my first float, and if that’s what you intend to do, file each tooth until the layout fluid just disappears. This will give you a sharp edge and keep the teeth at the same height. I decided to try heat treating with this float, so I thought it best to leave a little flat on top of each tooth to avoid carbon burn-off at the very tip of each very sharp tooth. You can see the flats in this picture of tooth filing in progress…
…and in this shot of things when they’re all done:
If you’re not going to heat treat the float, skip to the last couple of pictures with accompanying text… If you’re going to heat treat, clean the layout fluid and any other accumulated crud off of the float. Bring the steel to critical temperature using whatever (safe) means you have available. I used a couple of torches with MAPP gas:
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