Drilling problems (my poor arm)

maybe peter wants an sds drill for crimbo?

The masonry types have a separate tip brazed in, the tip looks a little like a spear.

YES !!!!! I think you've hit the nail on the head. :-)

You haven't drilled the hole on the wall though. That still seems to be causing problems. lol

That's what's wrong !!!! She's using it in the drill pistol, when she should be throwing it at the wall. :-)

(sorry, but the urge just crept up and grab me from behind. must fight harder against them. although the screaming has stopped now.) lol

That sounds a very good idea!!

Not you an all :)

Much better for hard masonry:

and one of these

I know the guys who calculates the mixture of smelly stuff that is added to Natural Gas. He don't half get some funny looks when someone smells a gas leak and he say "I did that". :-)

In my kitchen, I have two gas pipes and two metal capped power cables running under the plaster and I've managed to hit them all! The good news is that a masonry bit doesn't make any serious progress into any of them so, although you wind up with half a hole that you can't use, you don't set fire to the house! I would check carefully before trying too hard to put the shelf in exactly that place.....

I'm glad to hear you have such a supportive and sympathetic partner ...........

I was thrown off a step ladder when drilling through the top of a wooden door frame. No one had told me that the idiot of the house.........sorry, man of the house had used 10 mm Twin and Earth cable to connect a separate consumer unit in his garage. His installation only had the main 100Amp fuse on it, because he'd taken his cable directly from the mains supply head to his house. Trust me to hit the live conductor and make an earth of myself. I didn't even feel it. In fact, I couldn't feel anything for weeks afterwards. :-)

When he saw what had happened, and had sworn at him for about five minutes, he told me he'd asked the guy from the electricity board if it was alright to do it like that and was told it would be fine, as no one would be able to touch it above the door frame.

I was only installing an alarm system and didn't expect to find an unprotected cable of that manner. At first I thought it was a cooker cable, until he told me exactly what it was. It didn't even go through the meter.

The cheeky bugger asked if my insurance would cover the repair to the cable. That's when I asked if his insurance would cover the fines he'd have to pay for the theft of service he'd committed. He still thought he was in the right, because the man from the electricity board had told him it was OK.

I have never did find that man from the leccy board, but when I do, there will be flames, believe me. :-)

So, the moral of the story is, make sure you know what's in there, "before" you start drilling any holes.

zulus, thousands of em.

Hammer drills can drill a lot of walls, but not all. You might there fore need an SDS drill, SDS is a far more effective system.

Another maybe is you may have hit some steelwork inside the wall. If so, dont try and drill through it, just move your holes a bit and try there. This is the most likely explanation, so try another hole or 2. But not 20 :)

Hopefully you have a masonry bit rather than an HSS spiral bit. Here's a good article on them:

Another drilling article:

Is it a masonry drill bit though?

I double checked its a multipurpose drill bit by bosch which says it can drill through wood plastic brick etc and is silver and has a blueband going around the whole of it making it look very cute.

Those are usually very good at masonry - especially when new. Even a normal hammer drill will make some progress in hard brick with one of those in it.

With a lot of houses there's no way to know. A more sensible approach would be safer drilling practices, ie not touching any metal part of the drill while drilling.

NT

They'll drill most bricks apart from very hard ones. Do you know what type you were drilling? Assuming they were bricks?

If it was sharp, of course. And you used a low speed. High speed and not enough pressure will blunt them quite quickly.

Basically you can't use too much pressure or too low a speed. Pressure is produced by body weight rather than strength. And can be more difficult above say waist height.

But as others have said with Xmas coming up get an SDS drill. They don't rely on pressure from you anything like as much.

They work pretty well into London stocks without hammer action at all. Use them in my cordless if I can't be bothered getting a proper drill out. ;-)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember snipped-for-privacy@care2.com saying something like:

Or being bloody cautious if drilling within 6" of the door frame, where many switch cables are anyway.