I have some good brad point drill bits, and some good forstners, and tonight I finally got fed up with my cheap HF plain twist drills. So I'm looking for some recommendations. Thought I'd ask here, as I know several of you are knowledgeable in the machinist realm. I'll start with some background: I have a 29pc TiN-coated set from HF, which I got for ~$10. They've worked fine for drilling wood and occasional thin metal, but I needed to drill several holes in metal tonight, and killed 3 of the HF bits on what I thought was fairly mild steel (I'm recycling an old metal bed frame for wood storage racks, now that I have a home-made bed...) It definitely could have been my technique that killed the bits, as I don't know much about metalworking - I drilled 1/8" holes first, then 3/16" or 1/4", but the bits only lasted maybe a half dozen holes, and then were totally shot (or broken). Should I have used some sort of cooling fluid while drilling through the ~1/8" thick angle iron that came with my mattress? I assume that wasn't hardened steel or anything... I tried spraying the bit and hole with WD-40 while drilling with the 1/4" bit, but that didn't seem to help. At any rate, I need to replace some twist drills, and I'd like some decent ones (maybe $20-30 for a 14-16pc set? Is that reasonable?). A set going up through 1/4" would be OK; 3/8 and/or 1/2 would be nice too. I'm willing to put up with the HF set for the 64ths, so I don't think I need another full 29pc set. Even a 5- or 7-pc set (maybe
1/8-3/8 by 16ths?) would be great, if such a thing exists outside of the little B&D sets that come with cheap cordless drills. Now for some questions: Is cobalt really an advantage for durability if I'm not primarily drilling stainless steel and alloys? What about titanium? Is black oxide HSS different than shiny HSS? So far I'm considering Milwaukee and Dewalt sets from Amazon, and LV's "Triumph HSS Twist Drills". I've looked through catalogs from KBC, Northern Tool, and Grainger, but I can't tell what's really good quality and what's overpriced HF-equivalent. (OK, I can guess the $300 sets are better than HF's, but is it possible to get a decent small set of bits for less than $40?) Any other recommendations, either for drill bit sets or drilling technique? Many thanks, Andy- posted
16 years ago