Howard hill broadheads serration

[Ari_Bonn]

Been trying to do my research and I have a question in regards to putting the serration in with a file. So once I grind the edge and remove the bur.
I use the corner of the file and run it ( file forward motion) 90 degrees to the blade or 45 on both sides?

[frank bullitt]

Jerry Hill showed a friend and I, his technique on his heads. One of the nastiest serrated edge I ever touched!

Wish I had the directions to his sharpening.

[Terry Green]

Tom Musatto did a great segment on this on The Bowhunters for Tradgang.com DVD.

[JoeKu]

Do a search on You Tube on how to sharpen Howard Hill Broadheads by Rob Green

I prefer the single bevel hills.  With those I use a file with a safety edge, where the file teeth jut out in a single line of file teeth.  When the head is sharp enough to cut hair, I pull the file at angle from back to front on the beveled side to get get forward hook shaped  serrations.  Then lay the file flat on the flat side and push from back to front with just some hair and some air.   With standard Hills i use the same file and the same angled serration, paying attention to the fletching rotation, and finish up pretty much the same as Tom Musatto.  There is a difference between keen and merely rough.  I am curious about the specifics of the Jerry hill method.   Others around here have better luck with using a quarter inch round file, which seems to work fine for them, I use that method myself quite often.

I am surprised that this thread did not go challenged by the razor honed folks, cool.   I can add, I once demonstrated Tom Musatto's method on another persons 140 grain Hills at a 3d event, using a Grizzly file from Elburgs.   This was pre KME days and pre lots of other sharpeners.  The fellow had a dozen arrows with them and was getting pretty frustrated.  He just had cheap sharpening stones and wanted them to shave.   It was never going to happen.  I showed him two methods.  One a knife sharpener with multiple discs that I bought at the local Fareway store.  A bunch of strokes with that holding it tight on a table got it close and my leather belt got it to cut hair.  Then I showed Tom's way, immediately I got criticisms.   One big guy grabbed the arrow from me and declared, "I have seen this before, if it won't cut my thumb , how is it ever ever going to cut a deer?'  I almost got sick when he recklessly ran his thumb down that head.  His buddies, helped him wrap it up and took him to the nearest hospital for stitches.

[monterey]

I am surprised that this thread did not go challenged by the razor honed folks, cool.

Well shucks, someone has to say it!

Git yer broadheads razor sharp and leave em alone.  

Well montgomery, when that bur falls off your smoothy, ya gots nuttin' left but a funny looking butter knife.  

[Ari_Bonn]

I found this when searching images, looks like it's originally from two4hooking.


 web page

[two4hooking]

Thanks!  Saved me the trouble of posting that.

Good luck getting the Hill heads razor sharp....their construction kinda makes that difficult.  

They don't need to be a razor though.  They are deadly with the file serrations method...kinda like the feel of a soup can lid.  Anybody ever cut themselves on a soup can?  I have...

Schulz used to say, "I want to kill'em, not shave'em"  

[two4hooking]

I've also used the rada wheel before running the file serrations.  Then a few light swipes on the rada or crock stick. Works easy also, but I can do it all with the file.

 

Some years back we got a batch of 140 Hills that were so hard that they could not be filed or RADA wheeled or carbide sharpened.   I used a Dremel tool.  I got a remarkable scale patterned super edge.  I got a pass through with a 37 pound @ 26" Hill, on a tapered 5/16 cedar with them.  Craig used to send that pamplet out with each order of broadheads.  I will never forget the day that two cp kids came over to check out a pass through that my wife had on a pretty good sized doe. They wanted to see the miracle arrow, because they both had arrow failures with mechanical heads on Walmart carbons.  To my surprise they took my advice that very same day.  They followed those same instructions and two weeks later one blew through a good buck and watched the deer go down.  A week later the other had similar results.  They were convinced that they found the perfect head.  It flew straight,(not all arrows with mechanical heads fly straight), it flew through,(like many others with some mechanical heads, they got virtually no penetration with their first attempts) and left a deer at the end of a good and fairly short blood trail.  Their transition to becoming totally Hill style shooters and hunters, began with the broadhead.

[monterey]

Hah!  I see that my evil twin Montgomery has once again hacked and posted on my account.  

[Ari_Bonn]

Well I tried it on a hill head and shot some bone I had laying around, call me impressed.

Now I just gotta wait for my echo from chuck.

[frank bullitt]

Traditional Archery Digest.
Jerry's had a couple more steps or swipes if memory serves me. His heads were stainless, and had a little more blade.

I have used Howards technique on Modoc heads,
Nasty!

Were Jerry's additional strokes also serration strokes or were they clean up strokes like the Musatto method?

[Ari_Bonn]

I got a bunch coming, I'm going to try a few techniques and see what I like best. Will let you guys know.

One more method that has worked for us.  Louis Armbruster showed me.  He would flat stroke the edges from back to front until the edges were getting thinner and then reverse the arrow pointing it like Hill with his serrations, and reverse the file.  He then with the narrow flat of the file, quite vigorously, pull from ferrule out to the blade edge at a slightly forward angle on just one edge each side.  This raised a sharp and surprisingly strong bur. He used as many strokes as it took to get the large bur even, he said that some of the Hills that he had were harder than others.  I have seen several of his heads after he killed deer.  They did not drag hair, neither do my serrated heads, and that bur held up going through a deer and into the hill beyond. He used an eight inch file when he showed us his method.

[Longtoke]

It would be cool if someone would make a YouTube video demonstrating these different methods.

[Goshawkin]

I asked Jerry Hill about it, he said he's going to come out with a vid on it when he can