Drilling a Level Hole
George VondriskaDescription
Even if you own a drill press you sometimes run into situations where you need to use a cordless drill to drill a hole. When the hole you’re drilling is horizontal, and the thing you’re drilling into is plumb, you can use this cool trick.
Grab a screw eye
The “instrument” we’ll use for checking for level is dirt simple. It’s a screw eye. It ends up riding on the drill bit and we can tell from its position whether or not the hole is level.
You’ll also need…
If you simply put the screw eye on the drill bit it’ll ride up and down the flutes, and won’t give you an accurate read on this. To avoid this, cover the flutes of the drill bit with masking tape.
How it works
Gravity is your friend in this process. If, as you’re drilling, you tip the drill bit up and down, you’ll see the screw eye moving up and down the length of the drill bit. When you’re holding the drill and the bit perfectly level the screw eye will stay in one position on the bit.
Reality check
There are lots of great portable drill guides in the marketplace that will give you more accurate results than this process. But if you need a down and dirty low tech approach, this’ll do it.
Know the angles
If you need to drill a hole at an angle, and can’t use a drill press for the job, check out the cool trick in this video.
Here's a little tip you may not use in the shop, but if you're ever working outside of your shop, for instance, I used to do a lot of hole drilling in fence posts in order to hang gates on 'em. Here's something you can use. When you're punching that hole, and you're trying to determine, is that bit gonna go in level perpendicular to this face? It's a little loosey-goosey, guessy-guessy here in order to figure that out. What you can do is wrap masking tape around a drill bit.
That part alone is kinda fun. And then grab a screw eye and suspend that on there. And what you're looking for is, when this is tipping this way, gravity is gonna send the screw eye in that direction. When it's tipping the other way, hang on, it's gonna send it in the other direction. When you get this drill bit just right, it's gonna hold in the middle, I guess.
So what the masking tape does for you is it helps overcome the flutes, otherwise the screw eye is just gonna climb up and down those flutes. And it does work best if you hold it kind of a mid-range RPM. If you run full speed on this drill, it's gonna be a little too loosey-goosey there. You're gonna have a hard time controlling the position of the eye. So, mid speed, masking tape, the eyes have it.
And that's gonna help you drill level holes.
An easier solution is to use a scrap block of wood. Drill a hole using a drill press, and carry the block to your job site and use it to drill perpendicular holes. A lot easier than trying to balance an eye screw on a drill bit.
Live in Mozambique ! Any tips and advice is grabbed and stored !!
Whilst the principal of this works please tell me if you have actually done this in real life?😏
Doesnt take into account for left an right alignment
Great tip Thanks
Either fire your camera man, or the editor
You need a sharper bit