with today's high-performance outboard motors it's important not only to have the right prop on it but to make sure that prop has nice clean edges on each of the blades now this prop here I happen to ding up at the boat access when I was loading the boat and I've got some Nicks on it and I need to get rid of those Nicks I'll show you a simple way to use the file to get rid of these Nick's here are the basic tools you need to touch up a prop a pair of files and a steel brush the brush is designed to get rid of any steel filings you may have already in the file teeth in the two files I have is a rougher file and a finishing file let me show you how I do this you can see here on the back edge it's kind of nicked up and what you want to do is take your coarser file and simply work the file over the back of the blade removing those burrs on that outside edge and you can kind of hear that it gets smoother as I go across it now you run your thumb down it you can feel I've removed most of the burrs I got a couple little ones here there's pretty smooth now I take the finishing file which is real fine teeth on it and I just run that down that edge to get a nice clean edge so that way when that props turn it into the water I'm getting a nice clean cut it's not busting up the water very much so I get a nice flow across the edge of the prop so if you have a few Nick's in your prop it's easy to take care of but if you have any major damage done to your prop send it to a professional prop shop you