I am sorting through a big pile of drill bits and would like to know something. Those of you who are hobbyists, and like doing "stuff" at home, have you ever needed to use drill bits above 5/8"?
I would hate to end up with a yet another fine collection of things I do not need, but I know that if I ever need some particular size like
35/64" or whatever, I would have to pay a lot to get one. So... Has anyone ever practically needed fractional drill bits above 1/2" for real life projects? Or are they strictly for professional machine shops?
Hell yes. I use 5/8, 3/4, 7/8, 1" and up with great regularity.
Ill need to bore something out..so will grab the closest bit to the size I need to go, and burn a hole, then turn or bore the ID..saves a Hell of a lot of time.
In fact..I need a 1.75 right now.
Shrug
Gunner
"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."
If you don't have a lathe or drill press, you really can't use a drill above 3/4" very well. There are "Silver & Deming" drills that have reduced shanks so you can hold them in a small electric drill chuck. Well, you can drill wood with drills that are cheaper and better for the purpose. You can drill some things a bit harder than wood with a big drill in a hand-held electric drill, but it can also be a bit dangerous.
Of course, if you DO have a lathe or drill press, then they can be very good timesavers. If you have a piece of solid bar stock and need something with a 1" hole all the way through, you'd go INSANE drilling it with a 1/4" drill and then boring it all the way up to 1". Same on the drill press or milling machine. There are other ways to make a hole, but if you want to make a number of holes fast in thick pieces, it is hard to beat a drill bit!
I got a drawer full of Morse taper drills with my first lathe, in sized from just over 1/2" up to 1". I rarely use them, but when I need a deep hole of large diameter, I'm glad I have them.
As Gunner said, they get used a lot for hogging out the middle of a hole that needs to be bored. I have nothing over 2MT so can't go much above 1" but they are very useful when I need them. Having inherited my Father's collection on top of the ones I had already bought, I now have a fair number of duplicates. Eventually I'll pass those on to someone else or ebay them.
I'd keep at least one of every size you have over 1/2", right up to the largest size you can chuck in your lathe headstock,and if you have room, two of each......a short one, ....and the longest one you already have.
If you can't do that, then at least keep stuff for bolt sizes, such as tap size and clearance hole for 5/8, 3/4, 7/8 and 1".
If you keep a 1/16 to 1/2 set plus a 60 to 1 number set in either a boxed (Huot index boxes ONLY) or an open index kept right by each machine (along with a drill sharpener/polisher right there too), then you can keep the letter sizes, smaller number and metric stuff in a drawer someplace, and I'd put the bigger bits in there too.
The nice part about storing drill bits is they can be stored relatively compactly, not like the great variety of styro-foam "I" keep.
Take care.
Brian Laws>I am sorting through a big pile of drill bits and would like to know
You have a mill and lathe iirc your website correctly so you can use bigger drills. Some of the odd drills might be the right size for a tap or a hole you are going to later ream for a dowel.
I'd hold on to them for a while at least. Then you can decide if they have been worth having. I generally need something I saw or had a litle while after I can't get it or got rid of it.
--Ayup; yesterday in fact. Had to bore a .751" hole on the lathe and the smallest boring bar I had was a wee bit too big, so I got out the S&D set and got as close as I dared; i.e. 1/64" below .750, whatever the heck that one is..
For the first time yesterday, in fact. I needed to bore a bearing housing to 1.25": run a 1" drill in first, & then the boring bar. Worked just fine. Of course any odd fractional size would have worked just as well, in that case. That drill had sat unused in my junk box for years, but I never scrap old tools (to my SO's disgust :) Now I know why...
See now, I've never understood this. Anything that's obviously broken you toss, of course, but I've lost track of the times that something I've kept around for a couple of years has suddenly saved my ass, in either an expensive or time-saving way. For instance, an installation kit of M8 Helicoils just the other day. I've had those for 10 years (literally) and I remember they were a hell of a pain in the ass to find when I originally needed them.
These "oh the color has rubbed off one of the labels on this drill press, let's toss it" people just kill me.
Now I do keep track of everything that I can see I'm not going to immediately need by putting it in a labeled ziplock and putting that in a numbered bin, then putting that in a database in my palm: "motorcycle brake caliper bleeders? tap> oh, bag marked 'brake parts & pads' in bin #6". The bag has the bin number on it so I know where to toss it back afterwards w/o having to look it up again.
That way I don't run around going "Where the f*ck is that *$^ thing? I
*know* I have one! Where the hell is it??!!?!" like I used to do... then finally finding it after I bought another one.
On the other hand, the ziplock guys current financial quarter is due entirely to me, I think.
I've been meaning to bag, tag, box, photo, and add to a database all the "treasures" I have. I'm getting too old to remember what I have and I'm not all that old yet.
Buy the ziplock bags in bulk from a place that sells boxes and bulk packing materials.
Rather than use so many bins, there are over 500 banana boxes in my one shop building with all kinds of oddball parts, hardware, books and electronics. I did take one of those old racks for 9-track reels of computer tapes and added a set of wheels. One side is covered in these bins from Harbor Freight ITEM 41949
and the other side is filled with the old metal cased 50 drawer Akro-Mills parts cabinets for small hardware and components. Since it is on wheels it can be rotated to double the amount of storage for that floor space, and even rolled to the workbench I'm using at the time.
Couple years ago while Saturday saleing, I found a couple 1"+ , MT3 drill bits marked $2. I offered the young lady a buck each and her reply was "No, they belong to my boyfriend, and he is very firm", her female associate wet herself, and she turned deep red. I gave her $5 for the pair. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
I sure have. I use 1" drills (MT-3 shanks) in my lathe's tailstock for drilling the center out of something which I intend to bore larger. (Sometimes, I have to start with a 1/2" drill, simply because the finished size won't be much larger than that. I have an index with 3/4" to 1" sizes with the MT-3 shanks. I need to keep my eyes open for a similar set for 1/2 to 3/4" -- ideally with MT-3 shanks as well, but I could use MT-2 shanks. The drill press, of course, only has a MT-2 spindle, so I have a step-up adaptor to MT-3 socket for using those drills (very rarely) in the drill press.
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