A Mirror Reflects Perfect Holes
George VondriskaNeed a hole drilled at a perfect right angle, but can’t use a drill press? Let’s reflect on this; literally. An acrylic mirror provides the perfect solution for drilling perfect holes at a right angle to the work surface, even with a hand held drill. You’re going to love this tip.
Here's the problem. I've got a hole location marked on this board, and let's say, I'm not here in the shop where I have access to a drill press. I'm someplace remote, where I need to drill a hole, I need to make sure it's perfectly perpendicular to the surface. So it could be that you're drilling a hole in a cabinet or into a wall or wherever ya are, but you wanna make sure that the hole is perfectly square to the surface you're drilling into. So I think, what we need to do is reflect on this idea a little bit and see if we can come up with a solution.
In fact, the solution is a mirror, and it's all about the reflection in the mirror. So, this is an acrylic mirror. It's plastic. And that's important, because we need to be able to drill holes in it. So here's what I've done so far.
I've got two holes in here for a couple of jobs I had to do, 1/4 and 3/8ths. You can pepper this thing with more holes as ya need it. I've got my hole location marked on the board. So I'm gonna get over that crosshair. And then I'm gonna use masking tape to secure it to the surface.
Here's how this works. And it's pretty cool. When I hold the drill bit over the hole, if I really skew this thing like this, the drill bit in the real world is here, the reflection of the drill bit in the mirror is not meeting it straight, it's meeting at an angle. That tells me that everything is kerflooey. that this is crooked.
As I bring this back to where they're perpendicular, the reflection and the drill bit line up. Now, the thing that's important is that, I'm looking at it from this direction, from where I'm behind the drill. I need to also look at it from this direction, bring it back this way, check it again this way. Check it again this way. Drill my hole.
Taking advantage of the mirror, watching the reflection real carefully. Make sure ya check from both directions, is a great way to guarantee that the hole you're drilling in the absence of a drill press is perfectly perpendicular to the surface you're drilling into.
Such a simple great idea, just note you are looking for the reflection, anything other than exactly perpendicular is a deflection :)
A very good simple and practical way to drilling straight. I'm ordering some acrylic mirrors from Amazon to have next time I need to do this. Thanks for posting this tip.
This looks interesting
Great tip. I have an old CD which I use. It has a mirrored surface on one side. It is easy to keep track of and also works for holes on vertical surfaces.
It's great, it would really occur to me, thanks for your trick! Tom