Vintage hand cranked bench pillar drill problem

[spader]

I have got a very old vintage bench pillar drill. It drills OK materials such as hard plastic and soft metal. It cuts clean holes as expected.

But when it is drilling wood, it always tears the holes making messy around the edges of the holes. It doesn't matter what type or size of drill bits used. If it is wood or MDF, then it will tear the edge of the holes.

What could be this problem?

It cannot drill hard metal / steels at all due to lack of power. (The rachet mechanism doesn't work)

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

But when it is drilling wood, it always tears the holes making messy around the edges of the holes. It doesn't matter what type or size of drill bits used. If it is wood or MDF, then it will tear the edge of the holes.

If I understand correctly, then that will always happen with wood because of it's fibrous nature. It might help a little, to start with smaller drill bits and work up to the size needed.

 

[spader]

The other drills - electric and battery powered drills cut clean holes with the same drill bits. So I was wondering if there is problem with the chuck of the hand cranked bench drill? Or would it be due to the fact that it is not clamped level on the work bench? But then when using the other hand cranked brace / chest drills, they are cutting clean holes no problems. It is only this vintage bench pillar drill which makes messy cutting on the drilled holes on the wood.

It seems same problem with the smaller drill bits as well. But it cuts beautifully clean holes on the knots of the wood, soft metal panels and plastics.

 

[Nozzle]

Drill bits are designed to rotate between a certain speed range (proportional to the drill size). Can you rotate the drill bit at the same speed in your hand cranked drill as you can in your electric drills?

Nozzle

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Firstly, I think you may be trying to use metal twist drills on wood, which as Harry says is not going to work all that well. When drilling wood the drill bit needs to have a "nicker" on the outside of the circle you are cutting to shear the fibres before they are lifted. You also need some type of centre point to keep the drill bit going in a straight line. The modern (i.e. post-WWII) tool to use is called a "brad point twist bit", also known as a "lip and spur bit" which is similar to a metal twist drill, but is modified at the tip:

Above: Lip and spur or brad point twist bit for woodwork
Below: Jobber twist drill for metal

The right type of drill bit is fortunately cheap - take a look at Tool Station's offerings, but they normally only go up from 3mm to 10 or 12mm

I think the type of bench drill you are using wasn't really designed for wood, either, or at least not in the way we think these days. Most of the old wood bits you'll come across have a 4-sided (square) tang at the end and are designed to be used in a brace:

which generally require a 2-jaw chuck with a tapered receiver on the inside of the shell to hold and drive them. Unless you saw off the tang they won't work in a metalworking 3- or 4-jaw chuck. The other issue with woodworking centre and auger bits is that they invariably gave a threaded point, which is designed to pull the bit into the wood:

(Note the spur which slices the fibres of the timber).

Your drill is designed to self-advance as the handle is turned so any drill bit with a guide screw will be fighting the feed mechanism of the drill.

Given that your type of drill was on sale until the 1950s, what were they used for and what type of drill bits were they used with? From personal observation I know that they were at one time used in printers and print finishers for drilling stacks of paper and card, as well as for drilling lead (type) and zinc plate (etched printing plates) so that they could be attached to wooden backer boards* before being mounted on a platen press or even on the platen of a screw press. I have also seen them use for drilling holes in horn (think shoe horns which were at one time made from bone). I can therefore imagine that with the appropriate bits they would be able to tackle a lot of different drilling tasks, but not with most (all?) drill bits you'd recognise today, which are designed for power tool use. Some of the bits used (at least for paper and card) resemble spoon bits with the ends ground off, others are like the drill bits once used as pilot bits in "Yankee" push drills:

and there are also D-bits (literally a piece of drill rod cut off at an angle and ground away at the end to give a cross section which looks like a capital "D" when viewed end on)

* - with aapologies to anyone who is a printer - I am not and I obviously don't know the right terminology

 

[spader]

I used the Lip and spur or brad point twist bit for woodwork, you mentioned with the photo for drilling into MDF and also solid wood board using different sizes from small to medium and large too. They were consistently not clean cut.

I used the metal cutting drill bits for the wood, just for try, and it was a little better.

The drill bits were the cheap ones from Lidl.

I take your point "I think the type of bench drill you are using wasn't really designed for wood, either, or at least not in the way we think these days. Most of the old wood bits you'll come across have a 4-sided (square) tang at the end and are designed to be used in a brace:"


It is a small bench drill clamped on the workbench, and small drill table at the base of the drill. I thought, could it be for engineers cutting just soft metal objects or hard plastic?

Your drill is designed to self-advance as the handle is turned so any drill bit with a guide screw will be fighting the feed mechanism of the drill.

Yes, this is true. The chuck is keep going downwards as the drill handle turns all the time. It doesn't help cutting well, because the drill bit gets stuck in the wood while cutting due to the slow turning speed.
So perhaps it is just limitation of this old hand cranked bench drill?

 

[spader]

The chuck has 3 jaws just like the ones of modern battery powered hand drills.

 

[lostinthelight]

Its not a mortiser is it?, some pictures would be nice

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I used the Lip and spur or brad point twist bit for woodwork, you mentioned with the photo for drilling into MDF and also solid wood board using different sizes from small to medium and large too. They were consistently not clean cut.

You didn't mention that to start with, but in that case the bits you are using aren't sharp enough for the rotation speed you are achieving - brad point bits were designed to be used in portable power drills, and they run at 1000 to 3000rpm, but I have been able to use them in the past with a dual pinnion "egg beater" drill by spinning the drive crank really quickly (for dowelling, but I decided life was just too short in the end)

I take your point "I think the type of bench drill you are using wasn't really designed for wood, either, or at least not in the way we think these days."...
...It is a small bench drill clamped on the workbench, and small drill table at the base of the drill. I thought, could it be for engineers cutting just soft metal objects or hard plastic?

Are you aware of how recently plastics became available? Almost all of the "basic" plastics we use today (acrylic, nylon, polyethylene, PTFE, polycarbonate, etc) were first synthesised between the 1930s and 1950s. Prior to the mid-1930s other than celluloids, Bakelite and Formica (invented as a synthetic replacement for natural mica) there really weren't many generally available plastics, although there were a lot of other semi-soft materials in use, so I doubt that when these drills appeared (AFAIK pre-1900) that plastics would have been a consideration. TBH I am at a loss to see why a pre-WWII woodworker would ever need such a drill other than a few highly specialised applications - by the 1930s almost everyone involved in working wod would have had a brace and bits and probably an "egg beater", too, right up until the mid- to late-1980s when cordless drills started to come in

BTW you can cut wood at low rpm (think about how slowly a brace and bit work, maybe 30 to 60rpm) but the bit does need to be designed for that purpose. With a defined nicker.

So perhaps it is just limitation of this old hand cranked bench drill?

I think it isn't a limitation at all, I think you may well be looking at the wrong materials to drill with the wrong type of bits.

More modern type of drill with auto feed (upper) of a style made by Flott, Metabo, etc from the 1930s to the 1950s, earlier type with multiple speeds and manual feed mechanism (lower)

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Its not a mortiser is it?, some pictures would be nice

Hand cranked mortisers like the Ajax below generally take square tang auger bits or large hex tang bits (secured with a thumb screw), are designed to sit on top of the timber beam (you then sit on the flat part to weight it down) and I don't think they self feed





There are still some timber framers using these despite none having been made for 70 or 80 years. If you think about it, mortises require a fair amount of power to chop and if the OP's tool can't drill small holes, what chance is there that it can chop a mortise.

As it happens there is another type of hand mortiser which you will come across from time to time that looks like this:

which uses chisels like these:

As you can see they are not small tools. These disappeared from catalogues between the wars when electric powered mortisers came in in a big way but quite a few were converted to use an electric motor and carry a square chisel set. They were once universal in carpenter's shops and so common were they that they still surface from time to time. although generally sans chisels, which are now very hard to get hold of

 

[spader]

I was able to cut clean holes on softwoods with the sharper drill bits and my vintage hand cranked pillar drill up to 30mm, but no larger than that. Larger diameter than 30mm, I would need electric power drill with high speed and more torques I would imagine. Better quality sharper drill bits seem making huge difference for cutting larger diameter holes with the manually cranked pillar drill.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Power tools can be a double-edged blade; the extra speed and power means that they can often drive the nastiest, cheapest, bluntest tools out there and still get a result in some fashion, and many Chinese tools fall into all three of those categories, and has led to the development of a lot of poor quality tools simply because the manufacturers can get away with it - hand tools, such as ratchet braces, etc aren't as forgiving - to use a tool driven by muscle power alone requires a tool which is sharp in the first place. Such tools tend to be better designed and made, but come at a considerable price premium

 

[spader]

Plus I prefer using the old vintage hand cranked drills to electric powered drill press. There is something about these vintage simple tools still working after 50 - 100 years they had been made. They are a bit slower but seem quite capable of cutting up to about 30mm holes, and as you said, with the sharper and better quality bits, work very well.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Try the cordless drill of it's day, a brace and bit with Jennings-pattern auger bits or centre bits, then. You do have to learn how to sharpen the bits, though, as well as how to recognise a dud which is past redemption (not complex, but I can't recall many tradesmen I have worked with in recent years who can be bothered to even resharpen power auger bits). Similarly thr old "egg whisk" hand drills are good for smaller diameter twist bits and the like. Yankee push drills are superb for producing pilot holes as are Archimedian drills (still favouted by some jewellers - I have a Yankree archimedian drill on the bench for repair at the moment). And have you tried a Yankee screwdriver instead of a cordless? The problems with all these tools, though, is that they are slow, you need to learn how to maintain your bits and they can struggle on some modern materials

 

[spader]

Yes, I do have brace drills and auger bits, a couple of Yankee screwdrivers with a few straight bits (no PH or PZ bits), and an egg whisk drill too. As you said, they are slow, but fun to use, and super quiet (no noise virtually), I can drill away late at nights when the neighbors and others are watching TVs or in sleep. Cannot do that with any power tools. I haven't tried sharpening the old drill bits or auger bits before, but now will try sharpening them too. Thanks for your advice. Invaluable info and great points in DIY. I think I saw a very popular Youtube woodworking channel called Stumpy Nubs has put up a video on how to sharpen forstner bits recently, and it and your advice on this thread fuel my incentives having a go at sharpening the bits.