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Drilling oblique holes in sheet stock

Greetings, I'm starting a project to make some moulding planes from scratch. A hollow plane requires an oval cutting edge, to account for the bedding angle of the blade. Rather than try to file an oval, it occurred to me that drilling at an angle will do the trick easily. Now, how to do it. I have available a benchtop drill press and lots of clamps. I'll probably be using 1/8" O1 for the blades. My plan is to drill an undersize hole straight through, then jig up the blade and re-drill with the final size bit. The undersize hole should give the larger bit a place to bite. Is this an approach that will work, O wise metalworkers?

I'll still have to grind and file the matching rounds, of course.

Reply to
Australopithecus scobis
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Make sure to use a drill bushing regardless of the tool you eventually choose. It'll keep that drill from wandering "downhill" or off your intended mark. If tolerances are not too critical, you might be able to get away with not using one... And if teh holes are large enough.

Reply to
Joe

While it might seem a difficult task, in 1/8" O1 in the soft state rough grinding and filing to shape goes surprising fast. I usually hog out the waste with a small angle grinder, use files to come up to the line and, if necessary, finish out with Dremel or die grinder. Then harden/temper the iron and sharpen.

Reply to
Jim Levie

Gotcha. Thanks.

And to the other kind responder, yeah, O1 files nicely. That hand shaping is fun. In small amounts...

Reply to
Australopithecus scobis

It is possible to layout the distorted shape by hand. At some point, you might want to get yourself a copy of the knifegrinding (as in moulder and wood shaper knifegrinding) manual from Charles G. G. Schmidt in Montvale, N.J. As I remember there's a pretty good chart in there that will show you how to distort your profile so that it cuts what you actually want. The principals are the same. Profile grinding machines take care of this by simply grinding the knife blanks already mounted at an angle in their cutting heads. Then the task becomes one of simply following a pattern with a stylus, just like reproducing a key in a hardware store.

Charles Morrill

Reply to
Charles Morrill

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