Posted by David Sherman on Friday, August 11, 2006 at 1:09PM :
In Reply to: Hand sharpened drill bit? posted by chriscase on Friday, August 11, 2006 at 12:27PM :
One of my best purchases was a good drill bit sharpener. Small bits are disposable, but the larger ones are too expensive to toss, so it's tempting to just use them dull. If they're really bad they'll drill a triangular hole. But if a bit doesn't produce smooth, continuous shavings when drilling in mild steel with a bit of cutting oil on it, it needs to be sharpened. It's possible to sharpen large bits off-hand on a bench grinder but it takes a lot of practice and never turns out very good. Even so, it's pretty easy to improve a chipped or extremely dull bit by simple off-hand grinding. Of course we're just speculating here. The true test would have been to measure the hole and measure the bit.
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