The 3 Minute Drill

Brakes are another example, especially disc pads. Even doing the right job, it typically takes less time than making arrangements to leave the vehicle and pick it up.

snip---

re-drilling

I'm a bit confused here, but gather that the blade grew legs and took a walk, along with one complete saw, yes?

Because that's the way one would measure coving. The shop is 32' X 80', plus has an interior partition and some additional walls. The distance coved was about 400 linear feet. The coving is 6" square quarry tile, radius on the top edge. If you're not familiar with quarry tile (you must be, but some others may not be), it is one hell of a lot harder than glazed tile considering it's fully vitrified, and is not glazed. Comes in earth tone colors almost exclusively, mostly reddish brown. Ours is smoke colored, a brown/gray color. You don't cut this stuff with silicon carbide, diamond is really the only way to go. The saw in question has a 10" diamond blade and cuts wet. Came with a miter gage and a 45° bracket for cutting corners.

My wife

Interesting concept, making the entire tub. hard to say how others might react to it if you tried to sell, though. I think the thing I'd be most concerned with would be the ability to make it fully water proof, though.

I made a shelf and also a seat in the shower. The only problem I've experienced is the seat moving slightly, cracking a tile on one corner, right at the base. I'd do it differently next time, likely eliminating the cracking. I'm pretty sure I understand what caused the cracking.

I think if I was in your situation, using the tool for making a living, there's no way in hell I'd have purchased the Chinese saw from HF. It clearly is not as well made as the US built brick saw my friend owns, but for my personal use, where time was of little importance, I gambled on the import, and have been happy with it.

By the way, I really like the Milwaukee ½" drill, especially the high quality Jacobs chuck, but I have to admit I was a bit put out by the failure. I fully expected more from the tool than a premature failure, but hey stood behind it 100%, so it was just inconvenient.

Harold

Bob Swinney scribed in :

whats the problem Bob? I've done down to 1mm freehand, no problem, following tnuts advice (mostly). start with a clear idea of what you are trying to do, the rest is just mechanics

swarf, steam and wind

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Daniel A. Mitchell scribed in :

in a word, television, they're 'shown', but never have to do it themselves.

I do not own a television

Russia had the wrong idea in tryign to subvert the west using illegal guns and student protests. all they needed to do was buy up Hollywood and the networks, and produce TV for the masses....

hmmmm, maybe they DID!?

very scary....

swarf, steam and wind

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We all learn much of what we know by making mistakes. But we should start learning by making many SMALL mistakes. Over the years the accumulation of minor 'what works and what doesn't' experiences give us a frame of reference to deal with more complex issues. Sure, everyone can still make NEW mistakes, but we shouldn't keep making the same ones over.

Your three example problems are all the result of a LACK of the earlier basics. A lack of the basic understanding that only comes from LONG experience with similar situations.

Today our students, and our graduate engineers, are faced with complex problems without that knowledge base. They don't KNOW when they may be able to 'push their luck' (rarely a good idea) and MAYBE get away with it. They try many DUMB things that almost never work (but they don't already know that). They haven't hit enough thumbs with enough hammers.

Everyone gains experience with time. The problem is that our students are getting little or no practical experience BEFORE they enter college. Then they're trying to learn a complex set of skills with no frame of reference to build it on. Their 'degree' is often a tenuous structure built on a 'mud' foundation.

And such people often build or manage complex critical endeavors, like launching space shuttles, and Hubble telescopes.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Anth>

I agree, however the subject of this thread has shifted (what else is new?).

We STARTED off talking about cheap electric hand drills ('drill motors' to some). Somehow the term drill has changed to mean a cutting tool (drill bit?).

Though the idea of some finite lifetime relative to use still applies.

Dan Mitchell ==========

"Rob>

Agreed.

After our students left a good Makita grinder sitting unattended on table in plain sight in an unlocked room, they were surprised that it was no longer there when they came back. I was NOT pleased!

I replaced it with a new approx $100 Makita, and a $16.95 HF version. I gave the student's the HF grinder. That was about two years ago. They're done their best to wreck it, but it's still running. I've been using it too. The Makita is still in the box (where the student's can't find it).

The HF is indeed much noisier. Lots of gear 'clash' and motor whine. The side handle broke off, but was easily fixed. Anyway, it runs, it grinds, and is probably much less likely to get stolen, And, if it does, so what?

I bought a similar HF grinder for home. That's working fine also.

Dan Mitchell ==========

geoff merryweather wrote:

That's true. I sharpened drill bits by hand for almost my entire machining career and got very good results. That includes grinding split points. How they cut, for me, was never a problem, they always made chips easily. The only problem is the slight difficulty of getting the two lips the same length and the angle identical so the drill will cut size. As I progressed it was much easier. There's no substitute for experience.

Harold

The hell there isn't. A good cutter grinder will grind better split-point drill bits than you could hand-grind on the luckiest day of your life.

Ed Huntress

You refer to the 'new breed' of home-shop hobbyists, mostly woodworkers, but some metalworkers as well. Sure, many are 'amateurs', long on TV and book learning, and short on experience. The group probably includes many lurking and posting here. But, they're TRYING! They're doing SOMETHING! They're 'bashing their fingers with hammers'. They're asking questions, and learning what questions to ask. Given time, they'll learn something. These guys (and perhaps gals too) are NOT the problem. They just got started a lot later, many YEARS later, than they should have.

Gad, I WISH many of our students would watch Yankee Workshop, Woodright's Shop, Router Shop, This Old House, even Hometime and such. Doing anything comparable is way beyond many of them.

One sad side issue I see also in some of our students. Some of them lack the basic motor skills necessary to manipulate items (tools) properly. Also lacking is proper spatial perception. Such skills have to be learned at the appropriate time in childhood development ... they are VERY difficult to acquire later, no matter what the effort.

Dan Mitchell ==========

DejaVU wrote:

What if there is no drill bit in the shop small enough for that "hot job?" Hand grind the next larger to cut undersized.(split point) done that

Difficult, but not impossible. No doubt the regulars here simply cannot remember when they were inept with tools, because it was so long ago ('back when dinosaurs roamed the earth' according to my daughter...) and the skills are constantly being honed.

This stuff is *not* innate. It's learned. We learned it, anyone can. All it takes is a good teacher, and a desire.

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Ah HA! Finally I found the guy to sharpen my no. 60 drills that need a touchup.

Should I send them along, Harold?

:^)

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Nope. The blades that come with the saw are junk and can stop cutting right in the middle of say the third job , so it didn't even make it on the saw. I bought a DIT blade and put it on cause they work. It took alot of hunting to find those blades cause most of the ones are sugar coated or the matrix that holds the diamonds is too hard and up and stops cutting.

Now I see, they are called Surface Bull Nose and usually very expensive especially with quarry tile cause it has to be shaped like that with diamond. Swimming pool tile is even harder than that stuff cause it has to be frost proof. Thus dense enough as to not let water impregnate the tile. If it did when it freezes it will push itself apart. Some of the Italian tile is almost as hard as pink granite.

Water proof is NP , I've tiled over 1500 pools and worked on over

10,000 pools & spas. Moving is bad , replace it with white cement and re-grout it once in awhile. I know I can do a killer job with it, but... It would be about a $3,000 job , maybe that will equal out for those few that couldn't deal without that sterile scene. I think that is why most pools are plastered white. I personally like black pools , they look empty at night and dead calm.

I should get the boss of the gunite crew to do the concrete for me to make up for all the pools they screw up for me. Naw , but the pool I'm working on now is a good inch out of level throughout the whole pool cause they screwed up the water ladders. Some of the tile in my house cost $15 + a sqaure foot and the best room has a very fine crack , can't keep the floor from moving. I want to put in hardwood for the rest of the house , but I've never done it before. I've seen multi-million dollar homes under construction with cracks in the foundation and they are putting in marble not good.

I have one of those and a Makita angle grinder for dry cutting or a Stihl quicky saw. Its a shame what I do to those nice chucks with a loose paddle day after day mixing thinset. If I was in that situation I just might loose it with a new Milwaukee, kinda make you test them before you leave the store. I've bought crap when I just had to have it for a job like a air chisel that I can't make die.

split-point

THAT's the time to grind by hand. When grinding drill bits by hand becomes a machinist's first choice, then you know he's gone over the top. Making excuses for doing it when a cutter grinder or a good drill jig is available has become a neurosis of the machine trades, like talking to your micrometers and being a good listener when they talk back to you.

Ed Huntress

I should be confident on how to do what I'm asking , but it escapes me with this dryer.

Is there a way to change the voltage on one leg so that one will be

120 and the other 115 so that one can hunt down the problem and being able to tell one from the other. Cheaply... I'll try rebuilding the multifuntional switch , but it would be nice to trace each leg of the 240.

Hmmm, I remember now. Still it would be easier like above.

Ed , do you know of any plans or pictures that discribe how a simple one works? I've always done it by hand and getting each alien antenna the same thickness is a problem.

The only place I've seen such an illustration is in the old British MAP (Models and Allied Publications) booklets. I don't have any around here now.

A commercial version of the *simple* ones was sold by U.S. General some years ago. Maybe it, or its clone, is still around. A much better one is the Quorn, plans for which used to be available from MAP. Maybe they still are.

Ed Huntress

Miko says ****HI!**** For a quick touchup,sometimes without even stopping the spindle, (keyless), it sure saves time.