I've used a 115-piece set of drill bits for 4 years, and although I've taken care of them some have worn out or just plain broken. I was going to order replacements for these but I can get a whole new set of 115 for 30 bucks. I'm an ex-mechanic and I've always tried to treat tools like they are lifetime purchases.

What about it?- are drill bits consumables like WD-40 and cutoff wheels, or should they be cared for like children?

If you use them, they wear out. If you don't sharpen them as often as you should, they then become "taper-length" drills ;) because the lands near the cutting end are smaller than the drill lands farther up. Then, they squeak when drilling deep holes, and score the hell out of the side of the hole, but you already knew that.

Cheap drills seem to abound nowadays, and some cheap sets seem to be of decent quality. I stock up regularly on TIN coated 29 piece sets at anywhere from $35 to $65 CDN and they seem to be decent for general purpose usage. Your mileage may vary. $30 for a 115 piece set is pretty cheap, even the box is worth more than that :D

ALL tools are like old friends, some stay with you for a long time, some seem to be there one day and gone the next.

But even though losing a friend will make you sad, you can always go and find new friends...

O.K. so I just got home after a 16 hr work day... I go sleep now.

Russell.

Not all drills are equal.

If you bought 115 pc. drill set for $30 , and used each drill a few times, well you got your money out of them. Throw them out like inserts.

Now, If you have an $90 (each) coolant drill, of coarse you'll take care of it. Resharpen it, Thinning, Buff, etc... :)

I voted.
Protect them in a fine wooden case, polish them regularly, and pass them down to future generations.



.

For the most part they are disposable in our shop.......

For the price, its not worth sharpening the vast majority of used drills......some of the bigger ones (say 3/4 inch and up) are a little more cared for and sharpened as needed.....but why bother with a smaller/cheaper 1/8 inch drill

I used to think they were disposable, now I think they sould be used as long as possible via reshapening. We are such a throw away society, and that isn't good.

If it costs over $5, take care of it. If it costs under $5 make sure you get your moneys worth, then hand it over to the recycle yard. :) ......if it costs over $30, polish, buff, hand it down etc etc.

$400 insert drills are definitely disposable! Takes about 1 second to dispose of one :D

some of the bigger ones (say 3/4 inch and up) are a little more cared for and sharpened as needed.....but why bother with a smaller/cheaper 1/8 inch drill

yeah 1/8 is small, but throw out a 3/8 or 1/2 cuz its dull? not likely in my frugal little shop, especially when you buy decent ones in the first place. if its your job and there's a tool crib down the aisle, toss away, but for us weekenders its a far bigger pita to run around buying/ordering stuff than to just sharpen what you've got.

I voted "Protect them...." At least that is my inclination. My emotional side of this hobbiest says "don't toss it if you can save/fix it." My intellect says "time is money, you dope."

I used to ocassionally resharpen by hand but frankly I've not really achieved the skill to make it worth while. For those of you who have considered or use one of those Drill Dr. type of products, how do they perform. Sorry if that last question constitutes taking the thread in another direction.

Use em trash is the Kippers motto...sod the environment I need true holes when I drill lol

Going through what I am missing or is damaged in my index shows that everything I've trashed is less than 1/8". I don't seem to break or wear out the big ones, and it sounds like the little ones aren't worth sharpening anyways.

I sharpen three times, then toss. That applies to 1/4" and above , I can not see good enough to sharpen bits smaller. I'm retired, have time and enjoy sitting down and resharpen bits at times.

When I was in business, had a real nice old guy (retired machinest ) come around and sharpen bits very economically.I could not pay someone to sharpen as cheap and good . He came around every month for 15-16 years, then all of a sudden he did not come for 2-3 months, hated to call his wife, and I was right, he passed. His wife proudley told me that at least 25 other shops had called and offered their condolances, and told her what a good job he did..a real craftsman..

Adobe (old as dirt )

Use em trash is the Kippers motto...sod the environment I need true holes when I drill lol

Sod the environment be b********d; use them and then put them in the scrap metal for recycling.

I use, loose, sharpen, toss and treasure every bit !

Typically I'll work on some project run a bunch of holes and want a new bit of the same size - for sure there are none of even a close size, so I sharpen.

Sometimes if routing, engraving or sheet metal drilling, I'll just grind whatever I can find and bore away.

I know that there is a mystery force at work that causes the exact bit I want to become invisible until the project is completed, even if I have an envelope of 'em (somewhere) of the size I want. The same force works to drive me insaner on all sort of parts and tools, regardless of their size or color.

And of course there is "cleaned out of existance" which causes a lot of AREA 51 action - where ever I'm tryin to get something done.


Barry
http://www.barryfish.com

Sod the environment be b********d; use them and then put them in the scrap metal for recycling.
Hey that makes me a recycler :D I use old cans as reservoirs when casting too :yay:

an hss drill thats been used to drill a few holes is worth sharpening ,production drills as well as taps under 1/2" should be turfed due to fatigue ,cheap cost of doing business

cutting tools in general are disposible at one point or other

i say you should give back to nature, throw them out.

another consideration is this, if you make 20 bucks an hour through your day job and it takes you two hours to sharpen your 10 drill set you should go buy a new set unles you enjoy grinding drills.

an old jig bore hand taught me how to sharpen a drill, i re use em till the land at the end starts to wear. the more you sharpen you will evetually have to thin the web. a good quality drill will last years. i pitch every thing under 1/8 as i can't see well enough any more
rick

depends on the bit set. My good solid carbide bits get taked care of well (which means the girlfriend doesn't touch them), my cheep TiN coated set that I got for $7 at the local grossmans bargain outlet are disposable (which is why I always pick up a extra set for her when I get them.

The boxed stainless auger bits that were my Grandfather's don't get used, the forestner bits get touched up (especially after I use them for flat bottom holes in aluminum), the extra long bradpoints from Europe get kept in a case, the import bradpoint set will get touched up when needed, and the import set of TiN coated might get touched up but more likely replaced as they wear out. I'm better at sharpening chisels than drill bits. For me anyway import=Harbor Freight.

I try to standardize on a couple of sizes like 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2", then get better quality bits, taps, and dies for those sizes. Since I'm not making things for other people, I get to pick the size. I use 1/4" as much as I can and try to stay stocked on that size hardware, and buy multiples of 1/4" bits.

Hi all,

well I find like most here, I accept most of my common drills are disposable.

However the key word is "common".

I will add my ramblings to this thread for those that may be interested.

I take the view that the readily available fractional (1/64" though to 1/2") or metric (0.5 to 12.5mm) drills are generally used for producing holes of a "non" critical size. I resharpen as needed mostly no more than 3 to 5 times. I use a borer or reamer for producing accurate holes.

"Generally available" is one you can buy at the local hardware store or auto shop or even the corner convience store.

Now the point I would like to share is:- I have 'special' drills that I take lots of extra care of.

These include the specific drill sizes I use for thread tapping and mating clearance holes. I have these specific drill sizes stored along with the taps they relate to.

Also I have a full set of Number drills (80 to 0) and Letter Drills (A to Z) these being very hard to purchase as a replacement for say, a broken one at 8pm on a Saturday night. In fact some of these sizes I have in packs of 12 or 20 as I use them for specific jobs or projects.

I have other special size drills .. like a 2.95mm as a unique clearance hole for a Avdel metric threaded insert.These only get used for this task.

The above comments refers mainly to standard length straight shank metal working drills, and to a lesser extent wood working drills. I do take extra care of any of my taper shank drills so as large as 2.5" and any deep hole drills I own

I look at my masonary drills in same light. The ones for standard masonary fasteners I take average care of, as they are easily replaced

My SDS shanked drills however are costly and end up being looked after.

So there is my ramblings for what its worth.


regards
David
Australia.

All cutters are disposable items, unfortunately. This is hard to swallow when you are talking about a $75 end mill. However some can be resharpened. Large end mills anything over 1/2" I resharp if possible, Drills over 1/2", I resharp, Slotting saws get trashed, smaller drills aren't worth the time to resharp, unless you only have one in the shop, and you're working the weekend.

Depends where I am, in my wood shop HSS standard jobber drills last next too forever. But at the metal shop I'll chuck them in the garbage soon as they look not new. Can't take a chance screwing up a big $$ part for penny drill.

nothings disposable unless its under 1/4 inch. drill sharpeners used to suck, now they are ok, so hand sharpening skills are great for roughing them in, in severe wear cases(or over 3/4) , but for speed and quality nothing beats em. (i did not read this entire post) i think we have a darex, cbn wheel , and i have hated their other products but this one works great, sry no model number off the top of my head. go for the top end(or near) and u will not be dissapointed, 1 min to resharp a 17/32 and its back in the mill. compare my time to buying new and shipping, well come to your own conclusion

It's putting the coating back on that is critical to me??
Cutting Titanium, Inconel, Monel, and the easy stuff stainless once the coating is broken the drill will shatter, $8,000 stock = even $100 drill.
Draw Your Own Conclusion

Have you priced out drill bits on ebay these days? I've gotten Cleveland brand split point cobalts for very good prices in quantities of 10-20.

Then there's the taps... I love using forming taps as most of the holes I drill for my projects are under 3/8" in diameter. Rather than paying $10-30 per tap, I buy OSG off ebay in quantities of 20 at a buck a piece.

End mills, 2, 4, 6, 8 flute, 1" to 6" cutting length, every diameter up to 2", can be had on ebay for a fraction of the price, often times US brands.

I used to toss dull drills, until I learned how to sharpen them by hand. After that I only tossed the small ones that were a PITA to sharpen.

Recently I learned a lot about the hardrock mining industry and the devastating environmental impacts these mines have. In 2005 US Taxpayers were on the hook for an estimated 12 billion dollars in cleanup and mitigation costs for hardrock mines around the country. This doesn't include the lost profits to fisheries, farmers, and tourism that sterilized rivers and polluted lakes cause.

One example was Galactic Resources who, when facing a $180,000,000 cleanup cost for a mine in Colorado promptly declared bankruptcy. The mine was closed with a week's notice and all mitigation efforts ceased. A couple of months later the heap-leach system overflowed and the resulting cyanide spill steralized an 18 mile stretch of the the Alamosa river. That mine alone will cost at least $145,000,000 to taxpayers (likely a lot more over time). The mine itself only ever produced $81 million in gold.

One of the most important economic lessons I've learned in the last few years is that costs cannot be cut, only externalized. Cheap dillbits are not cheap at all - just the upfront costs are low. What we don't pay for at the till we, or our children, will be paying for through taxation or environmental losses for a long, long time.

Sure, we can point at the mining companies and say "for shame", but ultimately it is also the consumer's fault for living the disposable life and not caring until the cyanide spill is in our own backyard. So apathetic are the citizens that today's prevailing mining laws are almost all from 1870!

http://www.bettermines.org/summitville.cfm

So, I now sharpen everything I can and what I toss goes into the recycling bin.

At one time, it may have been worth while to resharpen drill bits but this is no longer the case. Treat them as disposable tools. Use them and lose them! If you are a weekend mechanic, then use them until they get dull (you can tell by listening to the noise it makes, look at the chips, see how easy or hard it is to penetrate the material etc. Between the cost of the material and the cost of your time, it is no longer feasible nor practical to resharpen.

I sharpen drills until they become tapered drills- at that point I consider them junk.

During my tool maker apprenticeship over 20 years ago, one of tasks was to sharpen drills- by hand. I must have sharpened a million drills in 5 years, lol.

Over the past 10 years, I seem to be the only one in these job shops I work in who can sharpen a drill by hand, thin the web, and still have the drill cut to size and cut evenly from each flute.

It seems to me that sharpening drills by hand is becoming a lost art.

I also want to add that I have used a few sharpening machines. I've used the Darex with the CBN wheel (mentioned earlier in this thread) in a few shops, and they seem to do a fair job.

The best tool sharpening machine I ever used was a Christen Tool Grinder. I've worked with them in 2 shops.

I've successfully hand sharpened #59 drills, so I have to disagree with tossing anything under 1/8".

Dear all,

Elsewhere on the Zone, I have been told that if I cannot sharpen a drill bit, I am a bit of a loser.

Never mind that. Here is a question that you may like to reply to..........


What is the minimum diameter of a HSS bit that you would attempt to sharpen on a grinding wheel, by hand, and maintain an accurate hole , even if you have been doing it for twenty years?

I need to know.

Best wishes

Martin

Dear all,

Elsewhere on the Zone, I have been told that if I cannot sharpen a drill bit, I am a bit of a loser.

Never mind that. Here is a question that you may like to reply to..........


What is the minimum diameter of a HSS bit that you would attempt to sharpen on a grinding wheel, by hand, and maintain an accurate hole , even if you have been doing it for twenty years?

I need to know.

Best wishes

Martin

I've successfully sharpened #59 bits (.041). It's not easy tho.

I'll try to sharpen any size if I need it, but whether or not I could sharpen a #80 is another story, lol.

#59 is pretty hard to sharpen by hand. Generally I don't try to sharpen anything under .062 unless it's needed for a red hot job.

I must have a wheel that has no bounce to do something that small. I did the #59's at a surface grinder because the bench grinder had too much bounce.

I've successfully sharpened #59 bits (.041). It's not easy tho.

I'll try to sharpen any size if I need it, but whether or not I could sharpen a #80 is another story, lol.

#59 is pretty hard to sharpen by hand. Generally I don't try to sharpen anything under .062 unless it's needed for a red hot job.

I must have a wheel that has no bounce to do something that small. I did the #59's at a surface grinder because the bench grinder had too much bounce.

Dear Roadrunner,

Thank-you for the information.

I have a mountain to climb.

Best wishes,

Martin

.... I must have sharpened a million drills in 5 years, lol.....

Don't exaggerate :D . If you worked a standard 40 hour week, 52 weeks a year and did nothing the else but sharpen drills it would be necessary to do each drill in less than 35 seconds in order to reach a million in five years.

Dear Roadrunner,

Thank-you for the information.

I have a mountain to climb.

Best wishes,

Martin

It comes with practice. Do you have a drill sharpening gauge (http://www.saw-toolsharpening.com/Gauges%20&%20Indicators.html)? It's near the bottom of that page, F00391 Multi Use Rule and Gauge.

Good Luck!

:)

Don't exaggerate :D . If you worked a standard 40 hour week, 52 weeks a year and did nothing the else but sharpen drills it would be necessary to do each drill in less than 35 seconds in order to reach a million in five years.

ROTFLMAO!

I never kept score. I didn't check your math now, but I'm not contesting your numbers either. I'll take your word for it, and stand corrected. It seemed like a million, lol. :)

It comes with practice.
:)

Dear Roadrunner,

Er..yes. An awful lot of it I suspect...

Best wishes


Martin

Dear Roadrunner,

Er..yes. An awful lot of it I suspect...

Best wishes


Martin

Sometimes no. It is like riding a bicycle as someone mentioned; some people click into it very quickly and others have to persevere.

One bit of advice, which is applicable to learning just about anything; if you don't seem to be getting anywhere take a break. Also imagine and visualize the motions you want to make without actually doing anything; this is a technique that has been shown to work when learning a lot of motion based skills.

$400 insert drills are definitely disposable! Takes about 1 second to dispose of one :D

haha, maybe less depending on how fast your rapid is ;)

Sometimes no. It is like riding a bicycle as someone mentioned; some people click into it very quickly and others have to persevere.

One bit of advice, which is applicable to learning just about anything; if you don't seem to be getting anywhere take a break. Also imagine and visualize the motions you want to make without actually doing anything; this is a technique that has been shown to work when learning a lot of motion based skills.

Excellent piece of advice.

well in my case, i'd say use them and trash them as my company is generous enough to spend $200,000 a week for standard tools. we do make our own tools for non-standard features but the management feels it's more expensive to regrind than to buy new ones and a very risky business to use regrind tools.

$400 insert drills are definitely disposable! Takes about 1 second to dispose of one :D

+1

But aren't they great?!

The smallest insert drill I have used was 0.500. I was taking great care to keep it around, but my co-worker trashed it in the aforementioned 1 second! but, hey, I have trashed a couple, too.

We have just gotten into using alot of insert drills in the past couple of years where i work. The ones over .750 or so, I have weld repaired if caught before they were totally destroyed.

The biggest we have is a 2.5". Talk about throwing some chips! Our 30 Hp machines will not push the 2.5" hard and fast enough to break the chip. i mistyped a feedrate a few days ago and hit the feed hold button right before the spindle would have stalled. The chip was .055" thick.I think the drill would cut at that rate, or close to it, if there was enough power to push it.

We use solid carbide drills almost exclusively in our CNC production. @ about $30 a drill, we regrind until there is not enough flute length to make it all the way through the part. After that I use the shanks to make Tap burning tools. Now Taps are definitely disposable.

What are the diameters and lengths of the drills you are using?

I agree with most.

Larger drills and specialty drills, especially if the cost id higher are worth resharpening.

I use some drills under .04" and the time (and money lost) it would take to sharpen something like that would far outwiegh the cost of a new 1 or 2 dollar drill bit. Not to mention the aggrivation if you DIY.

We have a Darex drill sharpener with dual diamond wheels, and since some of our drills have to drill to very close tolerances we grind them ourselves. When we send them out for sharpening they come back not only very sharp but capable of drilling .010 oversized. NOT GOOD! There's more to drill grinding than just making a sharp edge. :nono:

I live in the northeast, and my neighbor tony who has past about two years
tough me to take care of drills, showed me how to sharpen buff ect, his sharpening center is awesome has collects for every size drill a wet stone he said it was 40 years old .. he died at 76. he used to go to different business in town and offer a drill bit sharpening service, that was his extra money...
his wife said i could come over and get it, the sharpener is waiting for me but i just miss tony....
Frank

Since I started this post I have undergone a religious conversion. My friend loaned a Drill doctor to me and we went through all my bits. Everything has worked great and I will now buy better drill sets and use them forever!!!

MY thought on it is Years ago I bought A real Cheep Harbor Freight set and as they got broken or too short to sharpen I bought replacements one at a time, and always bought the good Starret ones. I figure a few more years and I should have a full set of the good bits, That my Grand Children's Grand Children better be using and replacing the broken / worn ones all kept in the cheepo starter index :) nothing like putting a Diamond in a Sow's Ear Bag :) :) :) :) :) :)

We bought a drill doctor a couple of years back. The productivity/accuracy increase made it well worth the investment. We don't throw drills out any more, as it takes only a few seconds to keep them sharp.
We've recently bought a bigger unit to do the larger drills. Cost us 2,600.00. The collet set was almost worth it alone...
Hand sharpening is impossible to do properly, in my humble opinion. It's probably better to use a new drill, if you need an accurate hole.

Sorry about coming in so late on this but I thought it was worth putting in my 2 cents. One of the biggest mistakes that many shops/people make is that they don't take care of the drill bits they have even when they are sharp or new. By this, I mean that there are a lot of people (especially those that don't have to pay for the tools) that just throw the bits into a container and expect them to be nice and sharp when they pull them out again. I can't tell you how many tools I get that come in chipped or damaged just from shipping that were thrown into a box and sent off for sharpening.

As far as replacing or resharpening goes, it depends on how valuable the bit is and the expected results. If someone were using a bit to drill holes in a board or sheet metal, then any decent store bought sharpener will work like a charm. If you're doing some precision drilling with a quality bit, then there is a good argument to save that bit and have it professionally sharpened. If you can find the right place, you may find that the bit will actually come back better than the factory sharpened one you started with.

The drill bit is very needed in our home or school especially when we make a pen box, so that we need to keep and care it.

____________
Kristine123

I hand sharpen most of my drills, unless close tolerances are needed, then its new ones only. I also worked in a drill factory on work experience while at polytech. That taught me a lot about how drills are made, they even used microscopes for checking the drills as they come off the automatic grinders. The drills the make there are top quality and the best ones to buy around these parts.

Shannon.