Mini review: Bosch Multi-Construction Drill Bits

[John Rumm]

Faced with the irritation of arriving on site at a place that required "a hole", with trusty combi drill in its case, only to find I had earlier "borrowed" all the drill bits from said case, I thought I would invest in a dedicated set of bits for each drill case!

To improve the luggability factor, I thought I would try a set of these all singing all dancing drill any material drill bits:

anticipation was that they would not be as good as dedicated Masonry, HSS, and Lip'n'Spur sets, but would be a handy way to recover from those forgetful moments!

Drilling wood: In short OK. Needs a little more pressure to start them drilling, but once they have a bite they cut as fast or faster than a HSS bit. The also clear the swarf nicely.

Masonry: Amazingly good!: They actually outperform any standard masonry bit I have used in the past. While up a ladder the other day I needed to drill a couple of holes in the (usually) "impervious to drilling" render/walls of our place. Fully anticipating needing to get out the SDS and extension lead as usual, I though I would see if I could get away with using the cordless "just for two holes". I had one of these drills in my pocket, so thought I would give it a go. I was amazed to find that I could sink a 2" deep 7mm hole using my 18V cordless (on hammer) in 10 to 15 secs. I went on to do another 22 holes in the same wall (elaborate routing of downpipe!) using the same bit and drill and it kept its edge and performance.

Conclusion: well pleased!

(I bought the four common wall plug sized bits separately, but I notice that Axminster also list a set of four - but I did not order that since they neglect to mention which sizes are in the set!)

[Mogweed]

Thanks for taking the time for that John. Very informative, to the point where I've just ordered some myself :o)

Mogweed.

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

[Dave Plowman (News)]

So it does. Trying to load something it doesn't like. Netsurf seems to cope, though. As does Fresco but complains about something as usual.

[Jim White]

What are you using, Andy? Seems ok here with Oregano 1 :-)

Cheers,

[bigcat]

NT

[Martin Evans]

5.5, 6, 7, 8 mm according to the printed catalogue

...and perversely 70p + vat cheaper to buy individually

[John Rumm]

As for being low energy, not a chance. I found the worm thread on the tip tries to pull the bit through way to fast - such that it attempts to take a 2mm thick bite out of the wood on each rotation. Rather like an auger in a brace would. In a very powerful cordless you will have great difficulty holding it steady, and it will either stall the drill or twist your wrist if you are not very careful! The solution is to pre-drill the centre hole. Then the worm screw just guides rather than pulls. Then it is much like a spade bit. Not sure it is much cleaner, but then again I have always found spade bits make reasonably neat holes except for the exit.

I used it for drilling into the end grain of a newel post base (to accept the 2" spigot on the end of the newel). In this mode it does not pull through so fast and you can get more speed and a lighter cut per rotation, but it still tends to switch randomly between spinning with very little cut and then grabbing hold and sucking out half a tree in one go.

So if you need a big blind hole of depth, then it will do the job when not much else will, otherwise not a pleasant drilling experience.

As usual YMMV, and remember we are taking about a 10 quid silverline version here and not the 20 to 30 quid version that most places have.

[John Rumm]

As for being low energy, not a chance. I found the worm thread on the tip tries to pull the bit through way to fast - such that it attempts to take a 2mm thick bite out of the wood on each rotation. Rather like an auger in a brace would. In a very powerful cordless you will have great difficulty holding it steady, and it will either stall the drill or twist your wrist if you are not very careful! The solution is to pre-drill the centre hole. Then the worm screw just guides rather than pulls. Then it is much like a spade bit. Not sure it is much cleaner, but then again I have always found spade bits make reasonably neat holes except for the exit.

I used it for drilling into the end grain of a newel post base (to accept the 2" spigot on the end of the newel). In this mode it does not pull through so fast and you can get more speed and a lighter cut per rotation, but it still tends to switch randomly between spinning with very little cut and then grabbing hold and sucking out half a tree in one go.

So if you need a big blind hole of depth, then it will do the job when not much else will, otherwise not a pleasant drilling experience.

As usual YMMV, and remember we are taking about a 10 quid silverline version here and not the 20 to 30 quid version that most places have.

[Arthur]

the same dills are on screwfix..exactly the same prices. Hmmmm

Arthur

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Interesting, since Dave had the same problem. My system automatically fetches Oregano 1 as the MkII version is so awful. I get frustrated everytime I have to use that MS a***e licking piece of crap. :-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yup - I've found 1 better than 2.

Can you order and pay from the RS site with any RISC OS browser?

I've found I have to resort to the dark side for that. But don't worry, it's only IE 5.5 on a 586 card, so not really a threat. ;-)

[Martin Angove]

Never realised there were so many RO users in uk.d-i-y :-)

Dave Andy Jim Myself

Any more?

Never used Oregano myself; my weapon of choice is Netsurf at the moment, though I have WebsterXL in the armoury and ArcWeb still comes out for a look-see sometimes.

Hwyl!

M.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Oh dear. You'd get flamed for that on some groups. It's got to be RISC OS these days. ;-)

Trouble with Netsurf is it doesn't have even the limited version of Javascript that Oregano does. But of course it's still being actively developed. There's also a version of Firefox being ported.

But the problem is the proprietary plug ins or add ons. The cost of the licence to use them - apart from the work involved. Things like Java. And the various streamed audio etc players.

[Tony Williams]

Me.... Ant Suite.

Look at the headers to see who runs what. In your case:

[bigcat]

lovely, nother nice review. Worse than I expected.

I think the only plus with flat bits is theyre very cheap and you can make your own if stuck.

NT

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've got Fresco as part of Voyager and find it the most flaky of all.

[<me9]

Me Too, but VirtualRiscPC. Oregano is my first choice browser, followed by netsurf and O2, which runs faster than on a real RiscPC.

[Martin Angove]

I did do a header search. Thing is, while Messenger and Pluto use the "user-agent" header, Marcel (Andy) doesn't, it uses "x-newsreader". Rather than trawling manually through the ng looking for any other variations (until I did a 7-day expire last night I had 4000 messages) I just thought I'd ask :-)

We're still dwarfed by some other systems, but it's interesting to know us RISC OS (noted) users don't stick just to the RISC OS newsgroups...

Hwyl!

M.

[Nick Atty]

It's not always a foolproof way of telling. For example, from my header:

You'd think I was running some version of Windows.

I'm not.