barrette file worth keeping?

[Sheen]

Accidently ended up with a grade 2 barrette needle file from my recent order. Already got a grade 4. Is it worth keeping? I love using my grade 4 for bezel settings. What do you use your grade 2 for?

[Dennis]

Depend on how tight your budget is, Sheena. You will find a use for it sometime, when you need a more rapid reduction. Dennis.

[china]

What Dennis said

[Sheen]

I think I've decided to keep it. Been making a few mistakes recently due to headache. Thanks China and Dennis. Hope you're both enjoying making things at the moment.

[Sheen]

I've used the number 2 barrette file already to shape the prongs on this sea glass ring, my first soldered ring. I struggled to get the ends of my prongs completely flat to the stone, they are 0.8mm silver wire, when pressing down it's tending to push the base of the prong (near the ring shaft) away from the stone because I kept my prongs just holding onto the stone. Hope that makes sense.

[Dennis]

What to do Sheena, is to cut inside the prong with a thickish saw blade (say2/0) to weaken it, just where you want it to bend.
It doesn't need much: a groove you can just see. Then the upright part won't bend.
It's quite tricky understanding where the groove needs to be, so you have to experiment.
Later on you can get more sophisticated and convert the groove to an angle using a file. Dennis.