drilling

5 Indispensable Shop Hacks

We’ve gotten such a great response to the two recent tips posts I did, “6 ‘Now, Why Didn’t I Think of That?’ Shop Tips” and “5 Clever Tool Hacks,” that I decided to share some shop hacks from another YouTuber doing DIY project videos, Izzy Swan. In the video below, Izzy shares eight useful shop […]

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Tool Tales: The Pump Drill

Tool Tales: The Pump Drill

A pump drill is an ancient tool traditionally been used to generate friction heat for starting fires, as well as for boring holes. The principle of a pump drill’s operation is similar to the button spinner or whirligig, in which rotational momentum is built and maintained by repeated twisting and untwisting of a cord. After reading about them in a book about primitive technology, I got interested in the idea of a “modern” pump drill, operating on the same principle as the ancient tool but manufactured from industrial-age materials instead of wood, stone, and bone.

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Ten Tips for Drilling Better Holes

Ten Tips for Drilling Better Holes

Let’s take a look at ways of making drilling holes better and easier.

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Tool Review: Bosch Pivoting-Head Drill

Tool Review: Bosch Pivoting-Head Drill

When it comes to power tools, bigger is sometimes better, but not when you’re looking to drill a few holes for a project and find that your drill is too large or unwieldy to accomplish the task.

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Tape Up a Coffee Filter to Catch Drill Dust

Tape Up a Coffee Filter to Catch Drill Dust

Clever idea I first saw in a recent issue of The Family Handyman. The flat-folding “cone” style filters will be easier to handle. It’s similar to the Post-It note trick, but less likely to leak out the sides. See also, e.g., the coffee cup trick for catching debris while drilling overhead.

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