Drill Sharpener

[AlanG]

I remember during my apprenticeship in the 60's working with an old guy in the Maintenance dept. who could scrape? freshly machined lathe and milling machine beds so the surface looked just like fish scales (for oil retention). Work of art. He could also sharpen drills some about 2" to 3" dia. by hand on a grinding wheel. Unfortunately I never developed these skills so have a fair sized collection of blunt drills. Can anybody recommend an affordable drill sharpening tool that works?

Alan.

[AlfredHitchcock]

Is this what you are after Alan?

 

http://www.lidl.co.uk/en/our-offers-2491.htm?action=showDetail&id=26224

 

Not tried it but Ive got a load of blunt drill bits myself and wouldnt mind a punt on this.

[Motorsport Mickey]

Toolroom engineer skills, I remember hand scraping my apprentice made surface plate by 25 scrapes per square inch until it was flat within 1/2 thou across it's 12" square surface, in both planes.

 

The benchmaster would give me a bucket of blunt drills from about 1/32nd dia up to 2" and ask for them all to be sharpened with correct cutting angles and level planes by the end of the shift, never mind all the other work and design projects he used to ask for.

Then he'd inspect the drills with much teeth sucking and after agreeing all were ok attack them on the 12" "bossing" (it was called cos it were enormous !) grinder putting grooves into the freshly ground drills and on one occasion grinding clean across the flutes on a 2" dia drill at an angle. "Do them again lad, and a bit lighter when you blend the two angles in across the cutting lands", it took me 15 minutes and two buckets of cold water to keep that drill cool enough so I could handle it, and when I turned my trouser turnups out there were 1/4" of iron grindings in them, came home darker than Frank Bruno and with a smokers cough from the grinding dust that took a week to go.

It were gggrrreeeeaaaattttt, and I can still sharpen any drill OR milling cutter you give me by hand and eye.

 

Mick Richards

[roy53]

But can we buy you at LIDL ?

[JohnG]

All

Is this what you are after Alan?

 

http://www.lidl.co.uk/en/our-offers-2491.htm?action=showDetail&id=26224

 

Not tried it but Ive got a load of blunt drill bits myself and wouldnt mind a punt on this.

I also learned to sharpen drills by hand when training in the toolroom, during my apprenticeship

At the time it was easy, but, it's been 35 years since I used an offhand grinder, so, I bet I couldn't do it now.

 

As a result, I now have one of these

 

It's OK, but slow and needs a 'knack' to use it

Edited September 1, 2015 by wjgco

[AlanT]

Loads of You-tube videos showing how to do this.

 

Big ones are easy. Small ones less so.

 

A 4X eye-glass makes all the difference beteen success and fail.

 

This thing is a reasonable close equivalent to the "proper" machine:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Draper-Twist-Drill-Bit-Grinding-Sharpening-Attachment-For-Use-With-Bench-Grinder-/301718691311?hash=item463fd5ddef

 

I have one but usually just do em by hand.

Edited September 1, 2015 by AlanT

[RogerH]

The Lidl item is a bit limited in sizes.

Doing by eye is dangerous - I prefer doing it by hand.

 

Bigger the better. Anything less than 1/8 is way too small for me and not cost effective.

 

Milling cutters are another mystery.

 

Roger

[foster461]

I have one of these

 

http://www.drilldoctor.com/drill-sharpeners-and-accessories/drill-sharpeners/drill-doctor-model-500x.html

 

but mostly buy cheap drills from Harbor Freight and treat them as consumables.

 

Stan

[Paul Down]

Stan, I also have a Drill Doctor one of the best tools for sharpening drills available IMHO. I have tried several cheap models like the LIDL one without much success.

 

The DD will cope with most drill types including masonery, twist, RH and LH ( with options). You can alter the grinding angles to suit the application.

 

Not cheap but worth every penny, perfectly sharp drills in a trice.

[Ian Vincent]

I have one of the Draper items that I picked up at a garage sale. Works well on anything above 3mm. Below that I chuck them away and buy new.

 

Rgds Ian

[Dave Larnder]

Hi Alan

 

For a month during my apprentice ship I had to go into the nozzle shop were they drill the copper blanks to make gas nozzles for oxy/acetylene cutting torches.

The machines were like double ended tailstock lathes with the jig in the middle so that you drilled both ends at once. One end had a larger dia. drill than the other, and you broke through using the larger size. They have 6 holes around the outside and one in the centre. The copper was about 2.5" long and 3/4" dia.. The girls who operated the machine did 14 nozzles an hour, and talking all the time to one another.I had a go at drilling as well, but my job was to help the setter with sharpening of the drills. Both sizes were less than 1 mm dia so you only touched the stone and half the drill was gone when you first start, but by month end I could do it. The funny side of it is that in the shop that I was moved into was the plant shop and tried to sharpen 3/4" dia drills etc, still trying to touch the stone very very lightly. Needless to say I can´t sharpen those tiny ones any more.

 

Dave

[moe and ess]

Toolroom engineer skills, I remember hand scraping my apprentice made surface plate by 25 scrapes per square inch until it was flat within 1/2 thou across it's 12" square surface, in both planes.

 

The benchmaster would give me a bucket of blunt drills from about 1/32nd dia up to 2" and ask for them all to be sharpened with correct cutting angles and level planes by the end of the shift, never mind all the other work and design projects he used to ask for.

Then he'd inspect the drills with much teeth sucking and after agreeing all were ok attack them on the 12" "bossing" (it was called cos it were enormous !) grinder putting grooves into the freshly ground drills and on one occasion grinding clean across the flutes on a 2" dia drill at an angle. "Do them again lad, and a bit lighter when you blend the two angles in across the cutting lands", it took me 15 minutes and two buckets of cold water to keep that drill cool enough so I could handle it, and when I turned my trouser turnups out there were 1/4" of iron grindings in them, came home darker than Frank Bruno and with a smokers cough from the grinding dust that took a week to go.

It were gggrrreeeeaaaattttt, and I can still sharpen any drill OR milling cutter you give me by hand and eye.

 

Mick Richards

Hi Mick

I remember those days, sounds as though your apprenticeship was similar to mine, every Friday afternoon you had to scrape your surface plate and the foreman would come along with his tin of engineering blue and if you didn't have the 25 spots to the inch, boy you were in trouble ha ha.

 

The appy toolmakers all had to grind so many drills each per week and the machine shop foreman would come round and check them out it certainly taught you how to grind drills by hand, no good these days on the small dia ones though!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Cheers

 

Moe

[littlejim]

I've got a couple of cheaper sharpening gadgets that don't do a very good job.

Prefer to do it by hand wearing the magnifiers.

Often takes a couple of goes to gets the angles right for cutting into steel.

[AlanG]

Thanks for that folks. I going check out the Draper attachment but in the meantime a couple of friends have told me they learnt to sharpen drills in their youth so will happily do mine. Result .

Alan.

[pinky]

 

I learnt the art of drill sharpening as an apprentice at westlands ,

 

You were given a 3/32 1/8 and a 5/32

 

When they wouldn't cut, you kept on trying until they did

In the end you could do it with your eyes shut,

 

the cutting edge, (leading) needs to be higher

than the back edge (trailing) the angle not to acute and needs to have a slight flat on the top

You can put the drill on the back of your hand and turn it by hand

you can feel it picking up you skin when it dous you no it will cut

Saves putting it back in the drill

 

Pink

[Motorsport Mickey]

Hi there Pinky,

 

When we got a bit "leary" of grinding perfect drills for cutting on size we used to grind them to cut a hole oversize by mismatching the drill lands, can't remember what we got it up to but 5 or 6 thou over was easily achievable. I've still got an 1/8" th and 1/4" drill with the cutting corners radiused and the cutting angle reduced so they were perfect for immediate dowel fits after a small pilot hole was drilled.

 

Mick Richards

[pinky]

 

 

Hi Mick,

 

Never come across that before

I use to use a taper'd reamer for dowels

 

Pink

[Guest ntc]

Or stop using **** drill bits simples.