Tried various versions . Had some success with them all but finally settled on Drill Doctor. Not cheap but only a couple of failures that were sorted by butting them back in and re setting the drill in the holder . I know that I should be able to sharpen them by hand but the Drill Doctor makes it so easy and quickly sorted out my badly sharpened / damaged Morse taper drill purchases from junk markets . up to 3/4"

Brian

I to have the Picador style sharpener and find it took me a time to get it to grind the correct angles, my faults. I grind my drills by hand and have got very good results so the Picador sharpener is not used, so I recommend you get some old drills and practice and you will soon get good results. I am at a stage where I am making the grinding rest by Harrold Hall, but my grinder at the moment has two adjustable plates bolted on the grinder so I can get different angles to grind up HSS blanks also you can mark with a pen angles on the plates so to get approximate 59 deg for drill sharpening. All this works for me but would like to have a go at sharpening end mills with the advanced grinding rest.

Bob

The Picador is not that precise, nor are the various clones, and back numbers of MEW will show the modifications made by various people to overcome the shortcomings, such as inclining the pivot axis.

If only you could access a cutter grinder, you would be able to four facet grind your drills. The results are so much better!

Howard

When I was learning in the 70s everyone was simply expected to learn to offhand-grind their own drills. Tool'n'cutter grinding machines were for toolroom use and shopfloor turners didn't expect to have access to them.

I can't remember whether it cost me 1 day or 3 to learn the technique, but I've never thought a drill grinding jig or machine was worth either the purchase price or the time spent learning it and setting it up – better just to wander over to the bench grinder for a few minutes. Do it decently and the drill will cut to size from solid within a thou or so, and drill many tens or perhaps hundreds of holes before you need to regrind it.

Hi Bo'sun, if you don't have time to waste do not waste any learning to off hand grind twist drills, your time is too valuable! I myself can grind a passable drill point by hand but that will not be acceptable most of the time, it seems that most of the Picador swing type jobs are distinctly hit & miss judging by the many articles about trying to get them to function correctly in MEW & Model Engineer. So, I have a Drill Doctor purchased a long time ago at a knock down drag out price from a car boot & if I had a pound for every 135 degree split point it sharpened during my working life I would be a very rich man, it is a little known fact that when setting & operating 2 small CNC bar machines where most of the holes are drilled with TiN coated HSS drills having access to 56mm U drills are no help at all. So it is quite possible to grind a 4 facet point where the facets are flat ie not curved using the toolrest designed by Mr Harold Hall incorporating rear stop, micrometer (ish) forward feed & 2 position indexing capability. I have on one of my bench grinders 2 metal bodied diamond wheels, 1 six inch & 1 two & a half inch still capable of lapping carbide tipped masonry drills et al, on the face. To address the final misgiving, that is grinding on the side of the wheel, purchase the stout type of wheel used on tool & cutter grinders specifically designed for grinding on the face not the periphery.

BobH

When I was an apprentice in the late sixties we were taught how to grind drills freehand, and we then had to show them to our instructor.

"How's that Mr Roberts?"

"Hmm… hmm… hmmm…" as he checked it against his gauge, "Not bad." Then he'd flatten the whole point off against the wheel and say "Now do it again."

I have my father's Picador jig which hasn't been out of its box since the seventies. He bought it, tried it, and found it was no better than his Portsmouth Dockyard apprenticeship had taught him in the 1920s.

George B.

As an airframe tradesman in the Air Force in the 60’s we were expected to learn freehand drill sharpening, we didn’t have access to fancy drill sharpening equipment, we soon acquired the necessary skills and this was mostly on 1/8 drills. We had to produce accurate size holes for riveting in aircraft structures, oversize holes were definitely out. I have tried various gadgets for drill sharpening since then but can’t get on with them, once you have taught yourself to sharpen drills freehand it stays with you, although in my 70’s now and eyesight is definitely a problem with small drills.
Dave W

I suspect most, if not all, of the folk who claim to "hand sharpen drills as good as new" would have a nasty shock if they took the results through proper inspection or merely put them into an industrial standard sharpener.

I have some that were clearly expertly hand sharpened, indeed I watched an ex toolmaker friend do a few.

Put in the accurate Clarkson device simple observation of the grind shows the expert hand sharpening results to be sadly asymmetric. Confirmed by a quick look through the travelling microscope. Hole size immediately after sharpening doesn't seem to be a particularly good test as both hand and machine ground ones were within all but the most exacting tolerances. I'm a little better equipped than the average bear butcertainly don't have the gear to properly and reliably define the actual differences.

What a did notice is that hand sharpening has much shorter useful, free cutting, life than machine sharpened. Doesn't take many holes before the drill is clearly working a bit harder with one cutting edge doing most of the work. But drills are fairly imprecise devices at the ebst of times.

Clive

Although I can do (sometimes) passible hand grind I am currently building gadget builders incarnation, I have both picador and drill doctor but don't get on with either of them

Lionel

One of the best attachments that I made for my Picador clone was a Harold Hall inspired attachment to ensure exactly 180° rotatation of the drill bit being sharpened.

Details are contained in this excellent book which should be considered as a useful reference for model engineers. Tool and Cutter Sharpening

No affiliation, just a satisfied customer/reader.

* Danny M *

Hi Neil, Guys,

When you have an accurate drill grinder, like the

https://www.gadgetbuilder.com/DrillSharp.html#Facet4 one,

putting a brand new drill into it and marking the facets with a marker. Very lightly touch up the facets and you will be surprised just how often they are way out. Most often one side is longer than the other or the face angles are wrong. Regrinding them makes a world of difference particularly to the larger drills. Also you will find that deeper holes don't wander as much. This I think is because you don't need as much pressure on the drill to keep it cutting, so the drill doesn't flex.

Unfortunately the biggest drill that I can sharpen in the four facet sharpener is 10 mm, so I either do them by hand or use the picador, which once you have set it up properly does a reasonable job.

NOTE: I had to bore out the collet holder to 1/2" to be able to actually get a 10 mm drill in there.

Edited By John Baron on 12/06/2020 08:52:45