Sorting out drills

[Matty F]

I've been having trouble finding drills of the right size among the hundreds of metric and imperial drills spread around four boxes of drills. People keep putting the metric drills into the imperial boxes and vice versa. The metric drills will fit into the holes in the imperial boxes. The sizes on the drills become unreadable once someone has let the drill slip in the chuck. It takes quite a while to measure imperial drills with a vernier, e.g. 19/64ths is not easy to read on an imperial vernier, and decimal places are difficult for me to convert to 64ths etc.

So I have made a gauge to instantly show the drill size. I have put yellow paint on all the metric drills. I have made a drill stand for the metric drills. People keep telling me that I can buy a drillbit stand, but I have never seen one that accommodates up to three drills for each size.

spent hours doing this! And made a mistake. As you can see we have a few sizes missing, so I can't drill holes for them.

[MM]

I bought an electronic vernier from Tschibo about two years ago. You can get a very similar model elsewhere. It was only around a tenner, as I recall. I use it for measuring drills, screws, bolts, small pipes etc. Very handy. Aldi or Lidl had one not so long ago, so the special offers will no doubt come round again.

MM

[Harry Bloomfield]

MM brought next idea :

About £8 or £9, very well made, an absolute bargain.

The do mm and inches, but it will be decimal inches - hence needing to be then converted to a fractional drill size for imperial.

[Roger Mills]

I only wish I was as well organised!

[Roger Mills]

True - but it doesn't take long (in Excel, for instance) to knock up a quick look-up table [1] with each x/64 size converted to decimal inches. You can them quickly do a match when you measure the drill.

[1] I have a feeling that my electronic vernier caliper (which I bought when Maplin had them on offer a couple of years ago) may already have a table printed on the back - but I can't be arsed to go out to the garage to check!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You'll find such tables quite easily with a search. Gives all the sizes and equivalents.

[MM]

Germany. I am strictly a metric person now.

MM

[Terry Casey]

This conversion list matches the resolution of my Aldi velectronic vernier.

As your picture shows your gauge and drill stand stop at 1/2" Ive stopped there but you can have more if you want!

(For clarity, use a fixed font)

inch drill mm

0.016 1/64" 0.40 0.031 1/32" 0.79 0.047 3/64" 1.19 0.063 1/16" 1.59 0.078 5/64" 1.98 0.094 3/32" 2.38 0.109 7/64" 2.78 0.125 1/8" 3.18 0.141 9/64" 3.57 0.156 5/32" 3.97 0.172 11/64" 4.37 0.188 3/16" 4.76 0.203 13/64" 5.16 0.219 7/32" 5.56 0.234 15/64" 5.95 0.250 1/4" 6.35 0.266 17/64" 6.75 0.281 9/32" 7.14 0.297 19/64" 7.54 0.313 5/16" 7.94 0.328 21/64" 8.33 0.344 11/32" 8.73 0.359 23/64" 9.13 0.375 3/8" 9.53 0.391 25/64" 9.92 0.406 13/32" 10.32 0.422 27/64" 10.72 0.438 7/16" 11.11 0.453 29/64" 11.51 0.469 15/32" 11.91 0.484 31/64" 12.30 0.500 1/2" 12.70

[Chris Wilson]

Matty F wrote in news:bc0688b1-79d7-466b-8da6- [e-mail]:

What's wrong with "Well it looks about right" and if if the hole turns out to small just using a bigger hammer?

[Matty F]

The main problem is when tapping holes. I need to use the correct drill size. If it's too big the thread is weak, and if too small the tap might break in the work.

[Matty F]

Yes I have an electronic vernier. It takes a while to switch it on, zero it, measure the drill and convert using a table. It takes two seconds using my gauge, and not much longer using an ordinary vernier with 64ths and metric. When I'm sorting out many misfiled drills, time is important.

[Chris Wilson]

Matty F wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Mate, I was taking the Michael ... Merry Chrimbo

[Harry Bloomfield]

Matty F expressed precisely :

You only need do that once, for a batch of drills.

[Scott M]

Matty's point is that he's got a shed-load[1] of people using the things and never putting them back in the right place so a super quick method of sorting is worth doing.

[1] Literally ;-)

[Frank Erskine]

Shame on you :-)

[Tabby]

I like the drill block idea, but would sugget one very useful modification. That is to include the imperial drills into the mix, marking them in mm on one side and inches the other. That way not only have you got all of one set for any application, but a full range of fractional sizes with them too, it can be useful.

Can we use that pic on wiki? Drill storage/sorting is one of those little topics that cant really be ignored.

NT

[Tabby]

Have you considered using the resistor colour code on the drills? Put it a bit further down than where the chuck will scrape it off. It'd eliminate time measuring them.

NT

[Tabby]

I hate things that do that. Maybe get a new one, trying before buying. You only need a basic 0.1mm resolution to size bits, =3D 1/254 inch, that sort of resolution can be had cheaply.

Conversion and tables are eliminated if all bits go in the same block marked in (tenths of) millimetres.

Modify the resistor colour code so you just use 3 rings with the 3rd being tenths of mm, and you can forget about 95% of those measurings too.

NT

[Dave]

You could try what I used to do and code the shanks, just above the flutes using the edge of a grindstone. Single indent implying imperial followed by indents telling you what the drill size is. e.g.

19/64ths. indent to tell you it is an imperial drill, gap, followed by another to indicate the one from 19 followed by another 9. Make up your own way of coding and the drill sorting becomes simple. Imagine a drill as follows

Pick up drill with cutting tip in your left hand and find the index mark that defines it as Imperial. I'm using the letter I to do ascii art here.

I I IIIIIIIII Imperial mark (make it a deep one if you want) followed a a single one, followed by 9 marks making it 19. Rotate the drill to read the next part of the code.

IIIIII IIII 6 followed by 4 giving the 64ths.

You wont scrub this with a loose chuck.

Obviously, metric drills will be much easier to mark up this way.

HTH

Dave

[John Rumm]

Don't know if those shops have made it to NZ, but eBay is another source of similar - straight from Hong Kong usually.