Hello Mark, I'm a believer in 'the only way to learn is to have a go' With this in mind, I would suggest that you don't buy a drill sharpener but take the time to learn how to sharpen them freehand. I have never used a drill sharpener and have managed to drill lots of holes, some of them quite accurately!

Hope this helps. David

If you can spare the time to put in the practice, study the angles given in various drawings of drill points, and think about creating those in a bench grinder.

I don't remember exactly how long it took me, but I think I spent about a day or maybe two in 1975 learning to grind drills offhand, and I've never really taken drill sharpeners seriously since. It's not magic, it's just a matter of understanding the intersection of curved surfaces with time and practice. A sharp eye, maybe a lip angle gauge if you need one, and a good steel rule are enough for equalising the angle and length of cutting lips, and if the swarf curls back the same down both flutes you know you're pretty close.

Put the work in, and a blunt – or even damaged – drill will never be much of an obstacle again.

Ah, I see David N's been saying the same…

Edited By Mick B1 on 17/02/2020 19:24:20

Mark, you don't give any indication the size range of your drills but I agree with David and Mick above its not rocket science and you can learn with a little practice to sharpen drills very effectively on and off hand grinder. If you are close enough to me – nothing on your profile ! – I would be happy to assist – I am in NW Lancashire.

I do have a machine recently re-furbished to sharpen small drills I now find difficult due to ageing eyesight ! However I used such a machine when in industry for small drills, it will handle down to No 60 or 0.5mm and up to 1/4" Look at Christen in my albums to see the machine.

Also if you put "Drill sharpen" in the forum search there is a plethora of posts — note sharpen not sharpener, sharpening !

John

The best cheap drill sharpener I have used is a nasty plastic thing called a Plasplugs sharpener. Don't know if they are still available, but with a little care they can produce much better results than most people can achieve offhand. There are some people that can get very good results by offhand grinding. My late father was one such, but I have NOT inherited that particular skill!

Andrew.

Mark

I presume you were thinking in terms of something like this :– **LINK** . Fairly expensive but Cutwel are suppliers to the professional engineering trade so I'd expect that their version works properly and that they can provide support.

Looks like "same" thing is £100 or so cheaper direct from China but what the relative quality is like I don't know. Various other badges too at a range of prices.

Personally I prefer the type of sharpener that works out in the open so if things don't go to plan I can see what's going on and, hopefully figure out whats wrong. I rather like the looks of the Kaindl BSG20/2 **LINK** but suspect its quite costly.

If a four facet grind will do then the Tormek dbs22 **LINK** looks as if it should do the deed.

Agree with Andrew that the nasty little plastic device in the original PlasPlugs multi-sharp set up works unreasonably well. I have a feeling that their current version is different and not so good. Its been copied by several makers. Some got the geometry wrong and don't work. Probably by being too cheap.

The Scheppach version a bit more expensive than most but looks quite well made and has the advantage of handing drills up to 10 mm diameter **LINK** . The original Plasplugs device and most of the clones only go up to 5 mm.

When it comes to the inexpensive end of the market the great thing about the PlasPlugs and derivatives is that they have a built in jig to set protrusion correctly and a flip over drill holder pretty much ensuring the drill will be ground centrally. The inexpensive Picador, General, Spiralux et al swing across the side of the wheel jigs work very well indeed when set correctly. However no setting jigs are supplied, also the drill has to be removed from the holder and flipped over to do the second edge, so getting things right can be something of an art. It doesn't help that many imported copies are made with incorrect geometry so they can never work.

Grinding by hand is fine if you do enough to keep in practice. Its not too difficult to touch up a drill but keeping the point central over successive sharpenings is a whole n'other thing. Having got the drill sharpening gizmo for my Clarkson Tool and Cutter Grinder up and running I'm steadily working my way through my (mostly) ex-toolroom collection. I'm surprised how far out the hand sharpened ones are. They look OK and the sharp ones still cut well but the professional quality Clarkson device mercilessly exposes the errors.

Clive

Get hold of a bigish drill, say 20mm and with the grinder switched off get the feel of rolling the end of the drill against the wheel. Then scribe a line on your workrest to line the drill up against and give it a go. Nothing to lose.

Edited By duncan webster on 18/02/2020 03:46:50

I get on well with the Picador Jig types. Clones can be made to work well with a bit of work.

I sharpen my drills off-hand. I don’t even expect them to be a precise size. Tiny ones are often dumped because they break – I don’t buy the cheapest tat – but all I expect of my large ones is that they cut fairly evenly from both flutes.

We learned from an early age how to ‘tickle up’ a drill using the the two foot (or more) water cooled foot operated grindstone on the farm.

Slow and not particularly aggressive but we knew when we got it right as we were only allowed to use the large hand operated breast-drill until the single speed black & Decker (600 rpm) came along. Nothing at all like precision work, for us, back then. It was the same with mowing machine knives – Dad’s resharpening lasted much longer than our first attempts…..

In the late 70s the precision sheet metal company I worked for called for drills to be sharpened at various angles for different materials and the drill was checked by inspection on the shadow graph. I got quite good at doing them up to 1/4 inch, larger where done by the cutter grinder, I've lost the skill now but still grind my drills by hand with good results.

Bob

At the time a lot of work was other than sheet metal,but special rivets needed different angles for 18g ,16g and no burns on the back when drilled.

Bob

This something I've recently tried to learn having failed in the past. After stumbling across a short YouTube video last week I've had some success with the technique shown in it. My cheap Aldi grinder has a tool rest I made myself and I've scribed a line so I can attempt to keep at the right angle. So far I've tried with a 10mm and an 8mm and both drills have come back to cutting decent holes. I figured larger sizes would be easier to start with. I appreciate he shows a very simple grind but I'm hoping if I can perfect it then I can try altering the technique to suit. Link below.

Sharpening video