Angle for sharpening old drill bits

I use a great deal of drill bits in both metal and wood, and have decided to try my hand at sharpening them. Is there a particular angle for sharpening drills both for wood and metal. The largest drill i ever use is 1/2 inch. A local hardware shop, sells a tool that attaches to your smooth stone bench grider.

Any help is appreciated.

Peter

Reply to
Raven
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What kind of drill?

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Reply to
B A R R Y

All are metal drills, sorry for not mentioning that, most of my actual wood drills are still very much sharp, as i tend to use metal drill bits in wood, as they are cheaper to replace. How-ever, now that 3 of our 5 hardware shops here in town have closed down, the driving to and fro is starting to cost.

Thanx

Peter

Reply to
Raven

This is a really hard question to answer in text format. It has been asked many times in the past and I would urge you to DAGS on the topic, (something that nobody seems to do anymore). There have been some really good write ups that several of us have posted that I think you'll find helpful. It's not a simple two sentence answer.

Reply to
Mike Marlow

Boy, has this one been answered. There was a long time contributor to usenet who is no longer with us who explained it all better than anyone has or will. I am proud to post this as some of TeeNut's finest work:

Jim, You are dead right about not being able to grind a drill without mechanical help! Well here's how you create your own "6 Million Dollar Bionic Darex" ;^)

Let's assume we are going to sharpen a 3/8" diameter, 2MT shank drill..it is about 8" long (these figures are arbitrary..I just want every one to have the same mental picture of what I am describing.) We approach the wheel, which has been dressed on its face, dead straight across with no grooves..(Ve SHOOT anyone ve catch putting grooves in ze drill wheel!!..No Pity..No Prisoners..Ya! Verdampt!)

(Sorry)...

The drill shank is held firmly in the RIGHT hand...ALL the movement and control is imparted by the RIGHT hand. For the purposes of drill grinding, the left hand could be...with benefit..a LUMP OF CLAY!!

It is from this "lump of clay" that we fashion the Bionic Darex".

Place your left hand thumb and finger tips LIGHTLY together..Relax the other three fingers aand let them naturally curl against the palm of your hand. Let the drill flute drop into the vee between thumb and fore finger and let the tip of the finger "Find" the curve of the flute where it fits comfortably. The tip of the thumb rests on the sharp junction ot the land and the flute, about an inch back from the drill tip.

Now...SQUEEZE HARD!!! YOUCH!...I said it would be easier if it were clay! 8^) Lift the drill from your fingers...see the GROOVE?...Drop the drill back in..it locates within a thou or two! Magic?..Bionic at least! Squeeze again to set the groove. You have created a customised drill guide that fits better that that on any machine ever built! You can relax your grip now..feel how smoothly the drill will ride back and forth, guided by the groove you have created for it.

Place the knuckles of your left hand, LIGHTLY on the ginding wheel tool rest, and swing the drill shank, from left to right (using ONLY your right hand) and push the drill lengthways though that groove in your fingers back or forth using the groove to make the drill twist or "rifle" in your fingers. Do NOT move your left hand in any way..it is made of clay remember!

UNTIL....

A) The drill axis is "eyeballed" to be at half the required point angle to the wheel face...You can scribe or chalk reference lines on your grinder benchtop to help you line this up..at least untill it become almost second nature.

B) The drill axis is dropped JUUUst below horizontal. This will ensure that your soon to be ground drill lip will start with a "smidgin" of cutting clearance.

(Ideally, and certainly for a beginner, the grinder rest should be set dead radially to the wheel center and about half the drill diameter below the true center of the wheel)

C) The two cutting edges of the drill..the straight, sharp bits, formed by the junction of the flute and the back face (the only bit you grind), should be horizontally disposed..with the edge uppermost on the side closest to your left hand..the othe sharp bit of course, pointing downwards (Jeeze this would be a lot easier with a sketch pad)

This I will call the SET or START position!

NOW, move your left hand for the first, last, and ONLY time during th is whole exercise. GENTLY ease the cutting edge towards the spinning wheel, carefully maintaining all the angles and orientations of the SET position..until the cutting edge is JUST shy of touching the wheel. If you listen carefully you will hear the tone of the entrained air, whistling through the narrowing gap. You will hear a subtle but distinct change of tone JUST, I mean Just...a couple tenths of a thou BEFORE the edge touches the wheel. STOP!!! FREEZE!! DO NOT MOVE!!

Now, press the knuckles of your lump of clay..sorry, your left hand FIRMLY down onto, into and around the grinding rest..establish a "Groove" on the back of your hand as well as between your fingers.

We are now ready to grind, Your left hand locked to the drill and grinding rest is otherwise quite relaxed..letting the drill slide, twist and tilt wherever your right hand and the groove in your fingers tell it to go.

The actual grinding is a bit of an anticlimax.

You have previously studied a new drill point, you have read about clearance, and cutting angles, and rakes and......

With the RIGHT hand in control, gently, kinda, lean forward... bending or squeezing your arms hands and body..rather than actually moving them..untill you take up that last couple of tenths and the wheel begins to cut. Let it cut..don't force it, and dont' rush it..it really won't hurt anything if you take a full minute Per pass per face. YOU and your "Bionic Darex" are totally in control of that drill and the wheel..Forget the times when, close to panic, you swung the drill wildly past the wheel, hoping to get "the dirty deed" over with as quickly as possible.

Take your time, enjoy the moment, THINK about the shape you are trying to generate. Just the one face is left to "Interpretation"...every other aspect,angle, facet, what have you...Has ALREADY BEEN TAKEN CARE OF!! and is locked in place under your control!

The right hand should perform a "Lower Quadrant sweep" for want of a better term..An observer behind you would see your hand move from about

17 minutes past the hour on a clock face, to roughly 25 minutes past. But it isn't a smooth arc of a circle, more a sector of an elipse..You see, as your hand starts to drop slowly, you are also rotating the drill in "the groove"..the first third of the turn needs to maintain that very slight clearance angle on the cutting edge, and not increase it too rapidly.

You need the clearance to cut..But too much at that point will WEAKEN the edge, and cause the drill to snatch and chip...So the first part of the rotation is ALMOST but not quite, just as though you were grinding a straight cone point on the end of your drill. Only as you approach the second third, does your right hand start to noticably drop..kinda "Catching Up" on the rotary motion...increasing the clearance as it does.

In the last third of the rotaion the right hand drops quite rapidly..Thogh not enough to catch the OTHER drill lip on the wheel..that lip is coming around quite rapidly by now.

Above all, take your time, if it helps, move the drill one degree at a time, and think ahead what shape or angle the next degree of cutting face needs...Remember, you have control, and IT ain't going nowhere 'til you decide.

After a pass on one face, flip the drill in your "Bionic Darex" DO NOT MOVE THAT LEFT HAND!!, return to SET position and repeat, the pass on the other face.

Having done a couple of passes on each face..it is now time to check the results on our homemade "Optical Comparator"

(Sorry Jim I couldn't resist!!) ;^)

Rest the center hole in back end of the drill shank, on the center point of the "Comparator" and use, first one and then the other drill lip to scribe a light line on your whitewashed (OK Blue or red dyed) surface.

You will readily see if the lines coincide..if the lips are even..or not, as the case may be.

Lets assume they are..Now look directly DOWN on the end of the drill to check the clearances. HUH? How can you check radial clearance by looking it staight in the face? Surely you need to look at it sideways?

Well no you don't...for once all thos interacting and confusing angle and faces and clearances are going to work together in YOUR favor and make what could be a tricky bit of metrology..quite simple. While we are looking at the end of the drill, we will also check that the POINT ANGLE is correct too!!!

(Ok guys, leave quietly..teenut has finally lost it!!)

No really, trust me. IF you look straight down on the point of a well sharpened, standard drill, you will see the two cutting edges, joined by the CHISEL edge which crosses over the web of the drill The angle fromed by the chisel edge to each cutting edge, should be ABOUT 50 deg...anywhere between 40 and sixty is ok for a first attempt. (I can hear the purists and theorists screaming and lighting up their flame throwers) But believe me, get it in that ball park and your drill will CUT. If the angle is too steep..you don't have enough clearance...negative clearance will give you an angle event greater than 90 deg. Too MUCH clerance and the angle will appear too shallow!

While looking at the end, check the point angle, How? Look down the axis of the drill at the cutting edges. Are they straight? If so, your point is pretty close to the right angle (As designed for that drill, by its manufacturer when he set the helix angle and the cross section of the flute) If the edges appear CONCAVE the point is too flat and if they appear CONVEX, the point is too "Pointy"

If your drill passes all these tests, which take but a second or two to perform, THEN IT WILL CUT..pretty close to size, without chattering, chipping, overheating, wandering or seizing. I guarantee it!

Hey, thats a pretty good start for the first drill you ever ground! All it takes now is a bit of practice for it to become second nature and almost as easy with a little 'un or a big 'un!

Hey guys!

My apologies for "goin'on" but If it helps just one person to pluck up the couragre and go hand sharpen his (or Her) first drill, by hand...

Then I hope you will bear with me.

It is late, I am tired and I am not even going to proof or spell check this,

'night all

teenut

Reply to
DanG

Reply to
Dave W

A neighbor sharpened all of my twist bits by hand on my grinding wheel... claimed it was easy... *sigh*

He checked his angle by laying 2 hex nuts side by side with the flats touching, and using the angle created on top or bottom to test his work.....

Very crude way to do it, but he sharpened almost 100 bits that morning and they were damn sharp and cut well..

Thinking back, I'm pretty sure that he was using the side of the wheel, not the face..

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Reply to
mac davis

New metal cutting drill bits are generaly sold with a 118d to 120d included angle. If you are resharpening these bits for use solely in wood, you can use a steeper angle for faster cutting. I've seen the grinder attachments, in fact I even have one squirreled away somewhere, but have never used it (It was included in a box of junk I got at a flea market). With some practice it is not too difficult to sharpen a larger drill bit by hand to a useable condition. I don't bother with anything smaller than 3/16" or so; When I was younger and my eyes were better I resharpened smaller ones. Personally I can not sharpen a bit to an edge as good as new but I have ssen people who can.

a factory-made cutting edge on a drill bit, but I have seen people who can.

Reply to
Larry W

Peter, step outside, get some fresh air, drive to a good hardware store and get a drill gage. The angle (one of the common ones) is stamped into the gage and there are numbers along the angled face. Grind until

1) both cutting lips are at the same angle 2) the center of the chisel point is centered when measured against the gage 3) there is some relief angle down from the shank end of the cutting lips. The relief angles should match. 4) you can not see a line at the cutting edge and looking at it along the length of the shank reveals NO metal higher than the edge behind it. If such an area exists, the drill will only rub, not cut.

You are done. Sharpen another.

It is a HUGE help if your grinding wheel is flat across the face and round, but do not use the side of the wheel.

That's it. The angle on the purchased gage is set for mild steel and will work 'well-enough' for many materials; other materials will benefit from adjustments to this angle and the chip clearance relief. Larger bits may benefit from web thinning (that's the chisel edge between the cutting flutes) but first get this basic 'into your hands'. Below about

1/8", the difficulty involved in getting a good point argues in favor of just buying them in jobber packs from J & L Machinery or Production Tool or any of a number of other machine shop vendors.
Reply to
BillinDetroit

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