Enlarge a hole in wood?

[Bob Eager]

I used my Dremel, with a cutter bit.

[Dan S. MacAbre]

I am trying enlarge the blind hole that receives the mortice latch in the side of an interior door. The old one has a tubular barrel about

22mm in diameter. I want one with a longer backset, to move the knob away from the frame (so yes, I will need to make some other holes through the door, but that seems easy enough), but the longer latches all seem to be 'heavy-duty' and require holes about 24/25mm in diameter.

I do regret not being clear enough, but I do now have plenty of suggestions :-)

[Dan S. MacAbre]

I do have a Dremel (and am always looking for excuses to use it) - I'll have a look at the cutter bit.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A wood rasp will remove a couple of mm in seconds.

[Fredxxx]

Given I have these items at hand, I would simply use a Dremel and a tungsten carbide bit to 'move' the hole a little.

The rest of the ideas seem an awful lot of faffing around for just 2mm of wood.

YMMV

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Ah - a blind hole. Makes all the difference. If the new hole is a lot larger, I'd be inclined to plug and glue up the old, and start afresh. Either an auger or hole saw for 25mm. A flat bit tends to splinter badly where it breaks through.

[Dan S. MacAbre]

I have one, and I'll try it. But the bits of 'manual' work I've done on these doors (rasping bits off) in the past has been hard, because the bit I am looking at is solid oak, and the hole is about three inches deep. I also need to make it an inch or so deeper for the longer latch body.

[Dan S. MacAbre]

Yup, otherwise, I'd have found a simple way to tackle it by now :-)

[Dan S. MacAbre]

It's the hole into the side of the door that the latch body slides into, not the one that the spindle goes through :-) I need to make it wider and deeper to take a larger latch body.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh I've seen them bigger than that

Another option is a reamer

[The Natural Philosopher]

Also everyone should brise this company. Their stuff is tough and it really works. Uses are obvious

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh. Then the permagrit link I posted has some useful kit that will fit in a drill go round and round and carve away..

[Dan S. MacAbre]

Maybe for starting it off, but I need a 25mm blind hole some 4 inches deep.

[Dan S. MacAbre]

Yes, I rather liked the look of that :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

I've put a curved edge on solid oak with a permagrit block. Almost as good as a router, though it took longer and I lost more weight :-)

A router with a 4" tool might work if such exists

But I think that the permagrits might actually do the job

[Dan S. MacAbre]

I've long been curious, but have no idea how routers work, or even the full extent what you can do with them. I've looked at them in shops, and I've seen amazing things that have been made with them, but am not mentally able to connect the two :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

They are simply crude milling machines for wood Basically a router bit will not exist in the same space as solid wood for long. The trick is to make up jigs and so on to control the movement of the work-piece relative to the tool to get the desired outcome.

is a really good basic primer on routing

[Dan S. MacAbre]

I've always fancied one, since the days when I used to read mail-order catalogues when I was young (I didn't only head straight for the ladies' underwear section). It's about time I found out what they did, so thanks for the link.

[John Rumm]

Either use an auger bit and the same technique with a bit of scrap to guide the auger.

Or just use a chisel to take some more material off the top and bottom of the hole.

[newshound]

Ah, so when you say "side" you actually mean "edge"? Going up from 22 mm round to 25 mm round is actually just about possible with a flat (spade) bit, particularly with a cordless drill which normally gives you a bit more control than a mains one.

For the hole in the side (where you want to move the handle further in from the edge) the quick and easy way is to turn the hole into a slot using a "straight" saw bit in a multitool (3 cuts needed)