It's not easy to measure the working end of a drill bit, but it should be better than 0.01mm. On my Dormer drill sets the shanks (easier to measure) are 0.01/0.03mm smaller than nominal size as the drill bits are ground on a slight taper. There are two rules for buying cutting tools:

Rule 1: Don't buy cheap cutting tools

Rule 2: See rule 1

The cheap sets at a 'good' price are nothing of the sort. If they're poor quality then any price is too expensive.

I stock up on my drills once or twice a year. All cutting tools wear and need replacing, although I drive my tooling fairly hard. In the smaller sizes the Dormer A002 drills are fairly cheap so although I have the wherewithal to sharpen them, it's simply not worthwhile. I'd rather spend the time making parts.

Andrew

Fraid not – nothing on God's Earth can possibly save us from our own foolishness!

As far as I know the Dormer brand is still solid even though they're not been made in England for many years. Not true of others – quite often when companies shut down their brands are sold to the highest bidder. What happens to the product is down to the new owner, good or bad. Sometimes very bad! Always check Brand names are still trustworthy before buying, and watch out for counterfeits.

I prefer to buy mid-range rather than cheap drill sets and them replace individual drills as they wear out. I use certain sizes much more than others, and buy them in bulk. Tracy Tools and ArcEuro drills have been OK for me.

DIY store sets are – I think – aimed at woodworkers and quick, dirty DIY jobs. The cheapest sets are disappointing rather than outright rubbish. Worst drills I ever bought came from a local market stall – nice box, impressive name, bargain price, but turned out to be carbon steel, with only the very tip hardened. Serves me right!

Dave

Despite not being UK made Dormer drills are still excellent quality, I believe Dormer is now part of the Sandvik empire, well known in industry for their tungsten carbide tips and tooling.

The larger sizes of Dormer drills are/were made in Brazil. We built a quite sophisticated heat treatment furnace for Dormer when they were manufacturing in the UK. When they shut the UK plant and shifted everything to Brazil one of my colleagues went out there to recomission it.

We buy new Dormer drill bits at work, from 1/16 up to 1/2 inch, these are mostly made in Brazil and are always excellent, but they sometimes turn up made in the UK and also Spain.

At home I also have sets of the low cost drill bits that I bought several years ago, 1-6 & 6-10mm in 0.1 steps, which both come in a nice fold up steel box and cost around £18 per set.

These are still quite good drill bits having a bright ground finish shank and ground flutes, but the cutting face on the end has clearly been ground by hand held methods. They all cut but the point is not always central due to uneven grinding of the cutting edges, which results in an oversize hole if drilled without a pilot hole, one of the 6mm drills produced a perfect 1/4 inch hole.

I see John has bought a couple of sets of Cleveland drills, probably made in Brazil and for the money perfectly adequate but Cleveland Drills etc, used to be made in Peterhead, Scotland, 15 miles from me. I still have some smaller sized drills but the biggest I now have is 1 1/32".

I had some up to 2" although hardly ever used and about 10 years ago I put out the word that I was clearing my stores. Well within the week I had four engineers from the oil industry looking over my stock and every drill (about 125) I was selling was gone and at about 6 to 10 times the price I had bought them for! I bought a new car and took the good lady on a holiday to Jersey on the proceeds! One drill went for more than £500 and the guy said that they were the only drills that would work on some of the exotics the were using for their products.

Sadly production ceased in the late 1980's. A lot of financial shenanigans that went on was the principal cause.

Dormer Drills used to have a factory here in Worksop, just a couple of miles down the road from me. It closed down some years ago and I think the buildings were demolished.

 I can remember using some Nachi drill bits at work about 25 years ago, which I think we're made in Japan, a couple of the larger one broke near the 3 morse taper revealing a very course grain structure.

Edited By Lathejack on 09/03/2020 22:57:01

You won't go too far wrong with Dormer, like others have said they seem to be made predominantly in Brazil now but Ive had also seen them stamped France, Sweden etc. Luckily they have kept quality high. I use them regularly.

Presto are also good but recently I've noticed a lot cropping up cheap. I have a feeling some of these are fake! If the bits aren't stamped or etched with presto on the side I would be very wary. Think about it, how hard would it be to fill a presto box with chinese bits?

Cleveland bits are also excellent, though ive only ever tested old UK made ones.

Finally some other brands Ive found to be good are. Guhring, SKF, Clarkson, Hall, Osborne and Sherwood.

Edited By Hollowpoint on 10/03/2020 09:34:05

Yes, probably Sheffield.

I'm not sure when Dormer stopped making twist drills in the UK, I think at least 10 years ago, but production started running down long before that, maybe before 1975.

In the mid-1950's Dormer were the largest maker of twist drills in the world, partly because they were the first to apply 'Steam Tempering'. It made Dormer drills cheaper and better than other makes for quite a long time.

Time passed and the world moved on. Other makers got into steam tempering and found different ways of improving twist-drills. Dormer faced competition again, and gradually got into financial difficulties. In 1975 they were acquired by SKF, who sold them to Sandvik in 1993.

In 1998, Sandvik acquired Pramet, a Czech Carbide specialist. In 2008 Dormer were merged with Precision Twist Drill and Union Butterfield (USA, Canada & Mexico). In 2013 Pramet merged with Safety and Impero (Italy), and the following year they all merged to become 'Dormer Pramet', but are still owned by Sandvik, an enterprise covering many other companies and brands.

So Dormer has been part of a Swedish based multi-national since 1975 and they make or source products from pretty much anywhere, including China. At the moment, production of Dormer twist drills is centred in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the Carbide products in Sumperk, Czech Republic.

Throughout these changes the quality of Dormer drills seems to have stayed consistently high.

Dave