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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/05/2021 in all areas

  1. 1 point
    expeatfarmer

    What have you done in Lockdown?

    For the last few months I have been medically chair bound with the exception of odd forays to the garages and workshop to find things. Father Christmas was very good to me giving me a comfy office chair, an LED head torch and a Drill Doctor drill sharpener. My new lockdown past time is sitting at the kitchen table in my comfy chair ,my headlight beaming away and my drill sharpener on the table in front of me. Over 50 years of workshopping I have somehow amassed a huge collection of drill bits , some were my Father's , Rhys gave me a pile of Morse tapered lathe drills but most I have bought when embarking on a new project. Although I am quite capable of sharpening drill bits ,it has not been a regular workshop maintenance task and consequently it was quicker to buy some new drills rather than sort out and sharpen old ones, UNTIL NOW ! The drill Doctor machine will cope with drills from 1mm ( if you are careful ) up to 3/4" . The drill bit is set in a chuck which aligns the flutes to produce a point angle of 118 - 135 degrees with minor up or down variation. The chuck is then slotted into a holding socket above the diamond grinding wheel to be rotated slowly by hand, two turns will dress up a tired drill to new, 10 turns will restore a broken drill. The machine was not cheap but works extremely well, will cater for split point drills and masonry bits, clean working ,not too noisy and a nice way to spend a few hours in the warm recycling useful things. I would certainly never have stood at the grinder for many hours hand sharpening hundreds of drill bits. I have now ordered a couple of graded drill bit holders so that I can again sit at the table and sort out all the sizes and then give a couple of sets to my sons. I recently bought a spring caliper guage for measuring valve shims and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it can display in mm / inches and also fractions of inches so I can now identify some of the odd sized tapping drills I have. That should take up a few hours maybe I will improve my set up with my headlamp and some wireless earphones tuned in to Planet Rock!
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