Suggestions please - Stuck 1m drill bit

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

One of my engineers has been installing a system in Cirencester. The property is very thick stone walled and so out came the 1m SDS bit.

When most of the way through, the bit got stuck. The SDS chuck clutch slips and will not drive the bit in either direction. The engineer tried using rotostop and twisting with mole grips etc with no success. I thought of some sort of impact wrench with a conventional drill type chuck to shock it loose. Local hire shop staff just shrug their shoulders.

Any suggestions?

[The3rd Earl Of Derby]

You need summat with a bit of leverage? mole grips are too small, a decent size bench vice will free it and hitting the drill bit with an hammer now and again.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

[sPoNiX]

Perhaps mole grips with a long tube on the handle to give leverage, turning against the direction of the bit?

Failing that, angle grind the bit off just below the surcafe of the wall. Fill the hole with plaster and drill the hole somewhere else!

sponix

[Grunff]

BTDTGTTS

Slide hammer, like you use on a car.

[Chris Bacon]

Send him on a course on how walls are constructed. Why's he bashing a hole through there?

Stillsons, although it might shear off. How much is protuding from the hole?

[Set Square]

How about gripping the shank close to the wall with a Mole wrench, and then using a small gemmy between the jaws of the Mole and the wall to prise the bit out? That way, you may manage to pull it back from whatever it is caught on without actually needing to rotate it.

[Sam Nelson]

My house is built that way---two-and-a-bit feet of sandstone at ground level. I've not had anyone try to drill a hole on the ground floor, and it's clear that the reason the phone cable comes in above second-floor level into the roof space is because that's where the drill-bit would go all the way through.

But if it's where the hole has to be...

[Rob Morley]

Big Stilsons?

[Phil]

Hit it hard with a 14lb hammer - should free the impacted end bit.

[Roger]

The message from "Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)" contains these words:

Shift the drill to rotation stop and see if using it as a chisel will get it out.

It's never happened to me (yet) but I have come close a time or 2 by failing to clear the dust from a hole often enough.

[Roger]

The message from [e-mail] (Sam Nelson) contains these words:

It did cross my mind after I posted my previous response that if the walls are rubble filled (as mine are) the jam might have been caused by shifting rubble rather than by dust in the hole as I had originally assumed.

[Matt]

Drill another blind hole adjacent to the stuck bit with a core drill halfway through the wall, stuff in a wild rat purloined from the nearest hovel (there will be plenty around, look for the nearest Sky dish to guide you), brick up the escape route with engineering bricks and quick setting epoxy mortar and then hope the cute furry thing that baby jesus loves eats its way through to the stuck drill and it will simply pull out.

Next week ask how to get the rat out of the wall.

HTH :-)

[david lang]

Mole grips on shank about 2" from wall. Two tapered wooden wedges + large hammer.

Dave

[Alistair Riddell]

Plenty reasons why it might be necessary to drill a hole that long.

Some of the walls in my PoW are more than 5 feet thick - took a man with a corecutter about a day and a half to get through last time we needed a hole made.

[-=Scozia=-]

Same thing happened to me when i worked for Scottish Power, but it was concrete wall that i was going through and drill got stuck on a bit of rebar. Couldn't get the damn thing out so left it in place, to my knwledge the drill is still sticking out of that wall to this day, 5 years after it was done.

Cut it off and re-drill hole elsewhere.

-=Scozia=-

[-=Scozia=-]

Same thing happened to me when i worked for Scottish Power, but it was concrete wall that i was going through and drill got stuck on a bit of rebar. Couldn't get the damn thing out so left it in place, to my knwledge the drill is still sticking out of that wall to this day, 5 years after it was done.

Cut it off and re-drill hole elsewhere.

-=Scozia=-

[John Stumbles]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Rick Hughes]

Cut off bit with an angle grinder, use grinder to countersink it into the wall ... make good and then drill a new hole.

[Harry Bloomfield]

on 02/12/2005, Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics) supposed :

Mole grip just behind the shank with a pair of car scissor jacks to pull on the grips. Failing that... Angle grinder to cut it off below the surface, then fill and start again (more carefully).

[Peter Taylor]

These suggestions to cut the drill and leave it in the wall are ridiculous. Why should the client have to put up with the remains of an SDS drill stuck in his stone wall causing permanent rust staining, let alone having to live with looking at a lump of filler near the second hole because some bodger couldn't be arsed to do the job properly the first time. Not to mention even more damage to the stone that will be caused by trying to cut the drill off below the surface.

If this was happening to my house I would be insisting the drill bit is removed. Some form of puller or extractor will be needed if it can't be freed by hand, and the stone will need protection while it's being used. If that can't be done then the damaged stone will have to be cut out and replaced.

Peter