Boring Deep Holes

I have had good results with that setup. Use your slowest speed and use compressed air or a shop vac to remove the shavings and dust to prevent heat buildup, especially if your are using green wood. Make sure your forstner bit is sharp.

Barry

you should also make sure the bit is going into the piece at the center at the outset. The best way to ensure this is to use your gouge and cut a cone ito the end grain - that will get your F Bit started in a place where it can not wander too easily.

Ray

Do you ever have a problem with the bit wandering? Do you bore from both ends and meet in the middle, or just from one end?

Barry

Use a "D" bit (aka: D-drill). Start the hole at the center with a bradpoint in your tailstock drill holder and then switch over to a "D" bit. Perhaps a bit slow, but it will come out at the opposite end dead center. Even Forstner bits will wander on you. They are great for relatively shallow borings, but over the space of 6 inches or more will wander. I have used a sequence of "D" bits of increasing sizes to bore the holes for my pepper mills and it worked out just fine. I made a "D" bit out of 1" drill rod. Took a bit of grinding to remove almost half of the diameter at the business end, but it was worth it.

Leif

Hi Barry

How deep is deep holes, ? for just a couple or three four five six inches, in dry straight grained wood a forstner bid should do just fine, backing it out every half inch or so, the problem with most of the extensions is that they are a floppy fit, but if you first go the max. with the bid without the extension you might still be OK, if you plan to go for 10" or 12" or more you should go with a D drill bit like Leif suggest, and I would drill the hole first before shaping the outside so if you are off center a hair it would not matter, O yes keep the speed way down.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

Barry N. Turner wrote:

I drilled out a couple of lamps a month or two ago, and your task is definately not enviable. I was drilling into wet paper birch end grain, and the forsner bit got extremely clogged right off the bat. So, I switched to an auger bit, and it was the same story. Finally resorted to the old standby set of spade bits, and they did the trick, though I had to drill in as deep as I could, then back it out and knock the piece against the bench to clear the long, stringy fibers out. I repeated that about 20 times or so, and finally got them cleared enough to run the cord through. Hopefully you'll have an easier time of it than I did! Spade bits will do the trick, they're just not quite so clean as the Forsners.

Either way, just make sure you don't ram the bit into the chuck! :)

Good luck!

We did a bunch of pepper mills a few years ago, and I went the other route:

I drilled the square stock, (some 3" x 3" walnut that the client had), in the drill press, and then mounted the blanks on in a chuck and live center using short tapered dowels... worked great..

Now that I have a larger lathe, I might try drilling the mills with the tailstock chuck, but at the time that DP just seemed more accurate...

BTW: we used Precision Chef grinding mechanisms and rods, and they worked really well....YMMV

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

You might also try looking on ebay for a gun drill that is the diameter you need. I use gun drills for making flutes and they are tough to beat for deep holes. The gun drill that you want is one ment for drilling metals that have one or more holes running the length of the bit for coolant. But you are not going to run coolant through the hole, you are going to run compressed air at about 5-10psi. The drill bot is held with a pair of vise-grip pliers. A short starter hole is mage using a forstner bit or a small square end scraper dead on center. The gun drill will bore a hole dead straight and leaves a great finish inside the hole.

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Where did you get those? I quick search in precision chef did not yeild much.

-Steve

I bore from both ends and meet in the middle. Usually aligns very well. No problem if it doesn't. Al