I'm making a bed base with many screws involved. These countersink drill bits and plug cutters come as a set. Only two of the possible combinations come close to fitting plug to hole. The largest countersink drill bit is #12 This leaves 5 of the plug cutters making plugs way bigger than the largest drill option of the set. What am I missing? Also can anyone tell me what the practical difference is between the claw like plug cutters illustrated and the more cylindrical ones?
I only have the cylindrical type, but it's likely that the others cut a slightly tapered plug - or may be easier (not easy!) to use in a hand drill without a guide jig
Thanks, It's possible I won't be doing much woodwork after making this bed base. But I'm so very unimpressed with this £12:00 eBay offering that I took a look at some smaller sets with Forstner bits on the Axminster site, one set costing over £50 , the other over £70. I'm sorely tempted, even though the other half is enthusiastically suggesting glue and sawdust as the more realistic solution.
Are you using a drill press?
I shall be, after finding a functional combination amongst the current set of drills and pluggers.
You might be making an (entirely reasonable) assumption that you have bought a set that in some way goes together.
What I suspect you have is two sets of plug cutters - one parallel, one taper, and a set of countersink drill bits. Three separate collections, none of which are particularly designed to play together. (especially as the plug cutters are metric and the drills imperial).
So grab a set of metric lip'n'spur drill bits, and use those for the counter bores, drill through with a smaller bit, then fit your plug cut with the plug cutters. Save the drill bits for regular holes with countersink for screw heads rather than deep counterbores intended for plugging.
Good advice John, thanks.
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