Craft Drill or DIY vaiety

[Dennis]

Hi Pat,

I too had one cataract done but luckily got away with it. Anyhow, in the here and now, you have obviously got a gift and you are making what the public wants. After all these years I never cease to be surprised that anyone wants to wear my stuff.

One thing you might find of benefit and that is a magnifying headband. There is a less pricy ones around which have a second flip up lens inside an a third flip down lens for one eye as well. They cost around £12.50 And I don’t bother to use the light, or the single lens.
See: http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/acatalog/L...Magnifier.html Kind regards, Dennis.

[Patstone]

Hi Dennis, thanks for that but I already have one of those, my problem is co-ordination, close one eye and see how close you can get with the flame and you will see what I mean, but dont do what I did and catch a pile of clean dog towels alight. Fortunately I was in the conservatory at the time with my little torch so was able to throw them out in the garden. The only accidents I have had really have been minor ones, we have a pale beigy yellow carpet (its called Dijon Mustard) throughout the house, (we chose it before we had dogs or blowtorches !!!!) and I was holding up an earring by the wire to see if it had stuck before I quenched it and the top fell off and burnt a hole in the carpet, learnt by that mistake, quench first, inspect after. Years ago I used to paint watercolours but although I was reasonable and managed to sell some, I never really felt satisfied with the end product, and now I think I have found my niche, I just love doing things with silver although most of my stuff is classic rather than contemporary, its seeing the finished object and knowing that I made it, and its pretty. Thanks for your help and advice, as I have been making silver stuff for about a year now, the college course was a one evening a week, there is a lot of things that they werent able to teach me given the time scale, so your advice is very much appreciated. Thanks once again, Pat

[medusa]

are those little hand drills any good? I have a drill press, but sadly it's too flipping big for my foredom or any of the other half dozen drills we own. However, I currently drill very little and thought that if I could just use a little screw type drill it would be better. any thoughts?

[Dennis]

Hi Liz,
There are those Archimedean drills, which work with string and a flywheel. As they have a reciprocating action they are really meant for use with spear shaped drills. Even so, people do use them with the smaller twist drills, although they only cut clockwise and blunten anticlockwise.

Alternatives are small hobby drills, ether turned by hand, or electric ones preferably with speed control. But if you have a large bench drill and it runs smoothly, you could adapt it by inserting Cooksons pin vice 999 AKK, cut through the middle. It has two double-ended collets to accomodate most small sizes.

Should you ever feel the need for a small bench drill, I can recommend the smallest Proxxon with the optional three jaw chuck fitted. I have had mine in regular use for sixteen years and have not even replaced the belt yet.

By the way, how was Norway? Kind regards, Dennis.

[little rabbit]

Hello, I am new and just got authorized to participate in the forum,
Can Mia or Dennis or anyone recommend a really good .8mm drill bit, please.
Over the weekend, I have blunted 2 with a Rotacraft Drill trying to do holes in fired Art Clay Silver (fine silver), and I have ONLY DONE 3 HOLES!!
The rest of time, I spent micro sharpening the drill bits with my "air and water (?) stone" and crawling internet forums.

HEL...P!

[Joe]

What about something like these carbide drills... or these are cheaper if you can wait for them from abroad...

[Dennis]

Yes, tungsten carbide drills do much better, particularly if your motor is a bit fast. HSS drills need to run relatively slowly and like a drop of thin oil to keep them lubricated. Steel burrs will even overheat and turn blue. When drilling something thick, they all need to be pulled out of the hole several times to clear the swarf.

However If you can find a fine grit diamond disk to run on your motor and touch the blades of your drill against it quite lightly they will re-sharpen in a trice. Ideally you support your hand piece on something horizontal when you do this. The angle for small steel drills is not that critical. You just twist one into your finger by hand to check for sharpness afterwards. For tungsten carbide the angle is much more important because they chip if you get it wrong. Dennis.

[little rabbit]

and thank Heavens for you, Joe and Dennis,
you have no ideas how grateful I am, I want to hug you, I want to kiss you. :-)

I am off to order the drills now.
will post photos when I have some finished pieces, and thank you again.

xoxo

Margaret

[ps_bond]

One minor caveat about the carbide drills - they are incredibly brittle and do not like any side-loading at all. I use resharpened PCB drills - they're bigger than a 3/32" shank, but they end up fairly cheap in bulk.

For HSS, I buy packs of 1mm jobber drills from Screwfix as my standard and use them with Burr Life. They're not great in a traditional pump drill though - they only cut in a clockwise direction, whereas the pump drill spins both ways.

[little rabbit]

thank you Bond, you look very cool in the photo. :-)
I don't know what PCB drills are, and I don't know what 3/32" in mm is, but it all sounded very clever.
I think I will wait for the 0.8mm bits that Joe recommended to arrive, and see how that would work out for me.

thank you, thank you to you all again!

xx