Drilling perfectly aligned holes in masonry walls

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Do you guys have any tips for drilling accurate, perfectly aligned holes?

I have often wondered this, and my recent DIY attempt at putting up a TV bracket reminded me to ask for some advice. I used a spirit level to mark the hole positions, but no matter how careful I was with the drill, the 2nd hole was ever so slightly off centre from the first one, causing the resulting bracket to not be level. Maybe I wasn't aligning the drill correctly, but I noticed the drill bit always 'slipped' a little when I started drilling, causing the hole to be slightly off. Maybe I should drill a pilot hole using a small drill bit first?

Hoping you guys have some good tips! cheers
 
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Fit the bracket or whatever with one screw (sometimes 2 may be necessary), level it up & drill the remaining holes using a smaller clearance drill that will just fit through the bracket holes. Remove the bracket from the wall & then open up the holes to the size of the wall plug. OR

As above but use suitable sized through fixings instead; saves taking the bracket down again but the fixings will be smaller.
 
A couple of tips.

On smooth surfaces use masking tape or electricians tape to help reduce "drill slip". Just make sure that the tape doesn't have any adverse reaction to your finished surface when you remove it.

Start holes off with a Bradawl or similar (a nail would do) to make sure you are at dead centre and then drill out an undersized hole at a low speed to allow accuracy. Check these holes with a level and then drill out to full size. Should the hole need adjusting up or down you can do this when drilling out to full size by angling the drill in the appropriate direction for a couple of seconds when starting to drill out to full size.
 
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I've had this problem quite a few times and I agree 100% with the above...

I also found another 'cure' for this issue - using an SDS drill as opposed to a percussion drill - every hole I drill with the SDS tends to be much neater and has less tendency to 'wander'...
 

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