How do you drill through stainless steel at home?

The difference between the men and the boys is the boys can maybe afford to run out and buy every shiny tool on the market, but the men can make their own tools.

Recently I had to drill through a short length of tool steel. Needless to say, titanium-nitride coated bits didn't even start the hole. I found some advice on a web-site which suggested using a torch to remove the temper in the area of the workpiece to be drilled, which was not an option in my case since the item I was working with was about 1" x 1/2" x 1/16". Plus I don't have a forge yet. Another suggestion was to use a wooden dowel and some grit, which is going to take a while.

I ended up hanging a jar of coins from the drill-press handle in conjunction with the dowel method. Periodically you have to replenish the grit under the dowel, but it went through in a few hours. Stainless steel is softer than tool steel, so a carbide tile bit might work instead.

Regards,

Uncle Steve

Little did he know how dangerous you would be in that field. ;-)

Here's a thought to keep in mind for the future. It's the way that gunsmiths annealed spots on (case hardened) '03 Springfield receivers, for drilling to mount a scope.

Cut the head off of a 12d nail, or use other appropriately sized pieces of mild steel bar. Chuck the nail or bar in your drill press and mount the work firmly in your vise.

Get the spindle turning at a medium speed, bring the nail down onto the work, and press down firmly. You want to make a spot glow at least dark cherry red from friction.

Take the nail out of the drill chuck and chuck your drill bit. Drill as deep as you need, or as deep as you can. If necessary, remove the bit, re-chuck the nail, and do the whole thing again. The annealing doesn't run very deep.

I've used this method to drill flat springs, and it worked great for me. It also leaves a minimum amount of distortion and a minimal heat-affected zone.

This is an important point!

First, I tried shoe goop + leather strips. Disaster. Luckily, the shoe goop cleaned off the stainless perfectly.

Then I tried rubber strips (made by cutting a 26" length of bicycle tube strips about 1/2" wide. Wouldn't stay on even though I used glue (it unwound while the glue was setting.

Then, in frustration, I simply used electrical tape and hanging wire! Butt ugly!

But, as Jeff said, form follows function ... And, as Oren is fond of saying, "looks fine from far away!".

Here's a picture of the abomination! (Drilling would have been prettier!).

Notice the Ballantine Church Key from the 60s' next to it. At least they had holes in the ends way back then.

I'll probably unwrap the electrical tape when I find something better - but - for now - it should work (but it's fuuuugly).

I like that idea best!

I can easily find a piece to fit, and it would look nice too!

I'd have to varnish it (it's going to hang outdoors, but then, I can at least DRILL the hole in the wood!).

That's the best idea of all!

Ever notice my domain name? The Cal Poly motto is "Learn by Doing" (Discere Faciendo). I didn't quite get the translation from Latin correct and ended up with "Learn By Destroying". It was appropriate Destruction and resurrection form a great learning experience. At the time, I think I held the record for maximum damage in a single semester. At graduation time, the faculty committee could not decide if they should require that I hang around another year as punishment for past indiscretions, or to summarily graduate me in order to get rid of me.

Working in electronics was somewhat less destructive mostly because I decided that actually thinking before I did something was a good idea.

Sounds reasonable. I'll test that out one day soon.

Regards,

Uncle Steve

What would be nice is a solid carbide drill. With it you simply apply power and the drill starts to cut. I have had mine red hot when it started to cut when drilling lathe bits. Those made of cobalt and are tough.

I made a forming bit. Drill and grind.

I bought mine from MSCdirect.com -

Mart>

Yes, and I've visited the site. Did you notice the emoticon that said I was joking with you?

At one job I had to take freshly minted techs and engineering students to try to turn them into usable employees. One engineering student started a fire by laying a hot soldering iron on a pile of paper towels, then he stood there screaming "Run for your lives, we're all gona die" He was standing in front of the fire extinguisher, so I grabbed the pile of flaming towels and ran out the front door to let them burn out in the parking lot. He had been shown where every extinguisher was, and there were squeeze bottles full of window cleaner that would have put it out. The last I heard of him was that he was working for RCA designing TV tuners.. I was glad that I was out of the TV repair business!

Another destroyed transistors by the handful buy putting them in wrong, then laughing about it. The last I heard, he workes at WPAFB in one of the labs. He was at R.L. Drake, till they got out of the ham radio business.

They were the cream of the crop. :(

That's become a common misunderstanding.

Good marketing. Bad engineering.

Were they affirmative action hires?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

At one job I had to take freshly minted techs and engineering students to try to turn them into usable employees. One engineering student started a fire by laying a hot soldering iron on a pile of paper towels, then he stood there screaming "Run for your lives, we're all gona die" He was standing in front of the fire extinguisher, so I grabbed the pile of flaming towels and ran out the front door to let them burn out in the parking lot. He had been shown where every extinguisher was, and there were squeeze bottles full of window cleaner that would have put it out. The last I heard of him was that he was working for RCA designing TV tuners.. I was glad that I was out of the TV repair business!

Another destroyed transistors by the handful buy putting them in wrong, then laughing about it. The last I heard, he workes at WPAFB in one of the labs. He was at R.L. Drake, till they got out of the ham radio business.

They were the cream of the crop. :(

No. It was a small electronics business, where the owner would hire people with little or no experience because they would work cheap. They were about a third of the employees, and were given the simplest jobs to start with. A lot had taken the Electronics course at a local vocational school.

Uncle Steve Inscribed thus:

I've used a similar technique for drilling holes in glass bottles to make table lamps. A copper tube with a groove filed across the end dipped in grinding paste. Slow, but you get a smooth burr free hole. Smoothing the inside is a little harder. :-)

Ed Huntress Inscribed thus:

Interesting technique, I'll have to remember that one !

I don't maintain it any more. I'm just below my maximum quota. I should move the DNS record to point to: which I also don't maintain much because it's such a disorganized mess. Oh well.

Nope. I usually ignore imbedded hieroglyphics.

Sounds like me about 45 years ago. One of the other techs had started a small fire on the workbench with a hot soldering iron. I arrived to save the day by unloading 10 lbs of Class D dry powder from a large fire extinguisher into the flames, and all over everything in the shop. One big "whoosh" and the extinguisher was empty. It took about a week to clean up the mess.

I was on the receiving end of another brain dead fire extinguisher operator. I was working on a Rose Float at the college when sparks from a welder set fire to a small pile of oily rags and rubbish. We were all standing around the impromptu bon fire (it was a cold night) when someone arrived with a CO2 fire extinguisher. Standing on the opposite side of the fire from me, they unloaded the extinguisher, which blew considerable burning debris in my direction. I was able to get out of the way of this crud flame thrower just in time.

Some things just have to be learned the hard way.

Careful, those that can't do anything useful on the bench, eventually become managers.

At graduation, we attempted to guess the future profession and level of success of various notable engineering graduates. It was generally agreed that I would die in a spectacular explosion of my own creation.

Several people in labor, mfg, design, etc ... have no theoretical or practical knowledge in metalworking, but still take, send or broker related work out. My problem with people in this group is the sickening bigotry and the convincing sock puppetry.

My incident was about 40 years ago.

Still better than fighting a forest fire with nothing but a backpak water tank, and a shovel. :)

He's probaly laid off right now. He was told that the fiscal cliff 'Sequester" would cut the funding for the contactor he works for.

It IS nice to be rcognized for your talents. It's a good thing you didn't work at a munitions plant, instead of Lingerie. How many people have been killed by an exploding corset? :)

WHICH group? The thread is crossposted among four newsgroups.