Sharpening drills of 1mm and less diameter an easy way

[WindyParticipant @windy30762]

Sharpening drills of 1mm and less diameter an easy way.

Some are broke or blunt.

I have a Tig tungsten grinder with diamond disc powered by Dremel type power unit.

Wondered if with a suitable guide and drill held by a pin chuck I could use that.

[Chris CrewParticipant @chriscrew66644]

Hardly worth the effort, I would have thought, given that drills of 1mm are so cheap. You can get box of 10, German Heller brand, on eBay for £3.95, including delivery.

[DC31kParticipant @dc31k]

Find yourself a really big drill bit. Look at the end of it. Is the end ground as a conical shape (we are talking overall geometry, not tip angle)? If you answer ‘yes’ to that question, look at it some more. If you answer ‘no’, how would you produce a non-conical grind with the device you show?

[Charles LamontParticipant @charleslamont71117]

The small drill sharpening tool designed by DAG Brown does the the kind of thing you are thinking of, but produces a four-facet grind which works better than the usual conical grind.

[DC31k]

On DC31k Said:

Find yourself a really big drill bit. Look at the end of it. Is the end ground as a conical shape (we are talking overall geometry, not tip angle)? If you answer ‘yes’ to that question, look at it some more. If you answer ‘no’, how would you produce a non-conical grind with the device you show?

DC31k, I suggest you follow your own advice. The two ground surfaces at the tip of a normally ground drill are conical, but the cones have axes that are not parallel to the drill, so Windy’s idea wouldn’t work.

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

You need to make a holder for the drills in some fashion. Then the trick part is to make a cam action that allows the drill bit to move in and out a little bit as it is rotated.

The Darax drill bit sharpeners do it that way to get the end geometry kind of right. They have the 2nd operation that then will cut the split point or the web thinning.

Their holder has a pair of pins, that rub against the cam profile plate.

With a loupe or looking through a microscope or similar magnification, like 10x for example, using an India stone, or a fine diamond file, you can resharpen a drill bit. I was shown that about 42 years ago. As I had the young eyes then, used a 3x loupe , the monocular type.

Even buying new drills is no guarantee that they are correctly sharpened. With the small drills, brands like TiTex are very good. There is a series that come on larger shank diameters as well. For 1mm drills they have them with 2mm shanks, and the smaller ones I have, are on a 1mm shank. Like the 0.4 drill on a 1mm shank. Sometimes you may want to drill fairly deep with a small drill and then the straight shank will be the best choice.

 

[Phil PParticipant @philp]

You could use a “Wishbone Drill Sharpener”

Wishbone Drill Sharpener

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Wish mine looked as good as yours Charles but it still works really well and on occasion have sharpened down to no80 but that took a while to get right.

[Dave WoottonParticipant @davewootton]

Lovely work on the DAG Brown sharpener Charles, a pleasure to see.

Dave

[Charles Lamont]

On Charles Lamont Said:

The small drill sharpening tool designed by DAG Brown does the the kind of thing you are thinking of, but produces a four-facet grind which works better than the usual conical grind.

Wow, that looks great!

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Sharpening small drills has more to do with being sure you always have sharp one when you need it than economy.

That said although £3 or £4 for pack of 10 small drills sounds cheap enough things soon add up if you want a spare for every small one in the box. All depends on whether you need lots of sizes to tackle anything that comes along or just buy what you need for the current job.

Technically I’m in the tackle anything, lots of sizes camp. But having both imperial, metric, letter and number full sets I can generally find something close enough to tide me over if I do blunt one or snap it. Replacement purchases are box of 5 or 10 depending on what i can find in decent brands at a discount. usually E-Bay.

Wouldn’t be without my Clarkson sharpener attachment for th bigger ones tho’. One day I shall draw it out and scale up to take up to 1 1/4″ (ish) so I can do all my bigger drills.

Clive

[John PurdyParticipant @johnpurdy78347]

Charles

Your DAG Brown sharpener makes mine look pretty basic, but I like your modification to hold the collets, have to add that to mine, as currently the collets are just  lying on top of it and I am sure it won’t be long before one gets purloined by the workshop fairies!

John

[samuel heywoodParticipant @samuelheywood23031]

I think i’d be likely to snap sub 1mm drills before they ever needed sharpening. 🙁

But i like your engineers thoughts Windy, ie~ problem~ what’s the solution?

 

I do have a couple of 1/64″ drill bits somewhere,purely for novelty value but drilling starts at 1/16″ for me.

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

Thanks for the link to the Wishbone idea, I like it  a lot.

Certainly easier than using a loupe and a stone, and looks to be more accurate once you get used

to setting it up. I see there is a 3d print one as well that would be appealing to those with a printer.

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