I can't believe how many cordless drills and drill drivers I gone through in the past 10 years. Would you believe 6. But in fairness, I still have 3 of them so that helps ease the pain. I guess what this tells me is that I do use my cordless drills a LOT. I know with some of my last pairs that only had one battery, when that battery was low or dead, it really constricted my woodworking so that also tells me how valuable drills and drill drivers are ... no wonder there are so many tips and tricks and accessories for the humble but irreplaceable cordless drill.
Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/2YCcwFohdVE
And what has made these drills even more valuable is invention of the Lithium batteries that have so many advantages over the old NiCad batteries, they disappeared almost overnight ...
Magnetic Holder
I love it when viewers send me tips and ideas, thanks Mike for this one. Mike suggested "gluing" one of the earth magnets to the front housing of a drill that could be used for holding bits or screws etc. A great idea, and for this I think I would use some hot melt glue to the magnet could be taken off easily if needed. This also reminded me of something I did several years ago using self adhesive velcro and attaching the magnets to one side and the other side attached to a drill ... a drill driver and even a hammer. Another way of holding on to screws, nails, bits etc on a variety of tools and extra handy when you are working in confined quarters.
Thanks, Mike for the idea and for jogging my memory on this great tip.
Spade Bit Marking
This tip was sent to me by a viewer William, who must also use spade bits as infrequently as I do. They work fine, it's just that whenever I want to drill a partial hole I can never seem to get the depth correctly. The answer to this, according to William was figured by none other than Norm Abrams from This Old House ... so thanks to both of you for this tip.
The solution is to simply mark the spade bit at the depth you want to go, now you have reference mark to stay within. Simple, easy and effective. Thanks William for passing this along.
Countersinking that Works
My Counter Bit Set is over 20 years old and consists of 4 different size countersink bits ... which ... sadly have had very little use and some of them have not been used at all. The problem is, the countersink holes they drill are rough and wavey. Really poor quality from what they could be. So much so, that I hardly ever use them. Then a couple of weeks ago, by accident, I happened to be using the large one from the set and had left the drill in reverse or switched it to reverse ... anyway, I countersank a couple of holes with the bit in reverse and was amazed at what an excellent job countersinking does when you spin the countersink bits in reverse. Nice even, smooth countersunk holes, Maybe now I will get some use of those bits.
Try it with your countersink sets and see if works with yours as well ...
T-Nut Drilling
I use T-nuts a lot. They are very effective for all sorts of builds, jigs and even temporary holds and they are strong, and easy to un-use if you need to take something apart. I have been struggling to find a good way of driving these so that they are sunk below the wood they are attached to give a nice flat surface where they are used. I have used forstner bits in the past and they work ok, but sometimes I have to re-drill which is less fun. The spade bits with the side tangs are a much better solution,
The center of the spade bit never wanders and it makes a nice size pilot hole that will easily accommodate the second bit that needs to be drilled for the T-nut shank. A quick and easy solution to installing T-nuts that means I don't have set up the drill press every time I just want to add a T-nut.
Stripped Screw Heads
Does this ever happen to you? It seems I am forever trying to extract screws where me, or someone like me has stripped the head from a screw. I do have a couple of screw extractors and they work sometimes but here is another quick and easy way of extracting almost any screw with a stripped head.
This of course, is assuming you have a Dremel or other rotary tool and if you don't, what a great excuse to pick one up next time you seen them on sale.
Bolt Taping
I don't often think of using bolts in wood, but in fact it works quite well, but I don't have a tap for making the thread in the wood. One solutioin is to use a bolt of the same thread size and modify it to become a tap. All you need to do is cut the head off the bolt then using a dremel tool with a steel cutting blade, is cut 3 or 4 slots in the tip of the bolt. When this is done, you will also want to grind a bit of taper on the bottom quarter or so of the bolt so it will start it's threading more easily.
You will also need to drill a pilot hole first of all, depending on the hardness of the wood, I will use a drill bit either 2 or 3 sizes smaller as the pilot bit, then use the bolt to tap the thread. I am amazed at how well it works and how strong that bolt is once it has been threaded into the newly created threading in the wood.
Copyright - Colin Knecht
woodworkweb.com
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