Airburst

I've got an old Raleigh front fork with front fork-ends designed for a very thin (7mm?) axle. According to Sheldon, these can be filed out to admit a thicker axle on a more modern wheel, which is what I'm planning to do with mine. As they're sort of forward-opening, I plan to do the filing on the lower half of each one, as it should be under less stress and I'll know I've done it symmetrically when the axle just fits into each one. The main question I have is, how anal do I have to be about not leaving any sharp corners? I'm worried about creating some sort of stress concentration which causes the whole thing to snap in half and put me on my face. It's a mild steel fork. Am I being paranoid here?


Thanks in advance.

unterhausen

steel isn't particularly notch sensitive, but of course the smoother the better

Canaboo

Use a rat tail file and then a dowel wrapped with emery paper to ensure nice rounded edges.

Eric Estlund 

Are the ends chromed? Makes for some difficult filing. I've had great luck with dremel-type tools as well as rotary saw bits in a drill, etc.

Airburst

No, they're not chromed, the bike is older than that. If I had a dremel, I'd definitely have gone for that, but in the end I used a flat file for most of it, then switched to a very small round file for the last little bit. It looks fairly smooth, and it's not under too much stress, so I figure I'm safe. Weirdly, one fork end required a lot more filing than the other to get it to take a 9mm axle, but both had the remains of the factory paint on them, so they've not been filed before. Could one of them have been bent somehow?

unterhausen

it's a Raleigh, they weren't exactly known for their quality control. One of them may have been bent