December 14, 2003

Tool Accessories

As suggested in an earlier comment, I'm going to ramble a bit on the accessories that you can get for your drill... Yea, I know... Kinda dry... I promise I'll write something about theatre again soon...


So, I've been watching a good bit of TV of late, and as usual, I'm being innundated by an unbeleaveable number of commercials from Sears, featureing Bob Villa... My, how far has this guy fallen in my opinion... But that's not important right now... Lets look at a few of the things he's pushing right now, and I'll expand to some other ideas beyond that too...


The first thing I got assailed with this season was the "screw-out" things... The theory here is that, once you've gone and ruined the drive feature of a given screw, you just pop one of these things in your drill, and it bites into the screw head and it comes right out... Now, here's a little info beyond that... These things have three flutes, or cutters that do the "gripping"... They're made of hardened, and I mean really hardened, steel, and the cutters are sharp, and have something like a 90 degree or slightly larger point angle... Now, if you stop and think about it for a moment, the fastener head is stripped for a reason, right?... That screw is stuck hard... What you are going to do with the "screw-out" is to simply continue drilling out the head... What you are not going to do, is remove the screw from its well lodged position... Your next option is to actually have the flutes catch in the head somehow... Following that catch, you will most likely snap the screw out, leaveing you with a shattered bit, lodged in the head of the screw, made from hardened steel, that you will not be able to drill out with out a super hard drill bit, and no, you are not going to find one of those at your local hardeware store/home center... Simply accept that you stripped the screw, and use a regular drill bit to drill out the head and move on by putting another screw in someplace else... Now, as an extension of this idea, or more propperly as the origin of this idea is the "bolt-ease"... These things have been around for years... They're designed for when you snap the head off a bolt... You supposedly drill a hole in the remaining bolt, then drive in the removal tool, which has a tapered reverse thread, and it pulls the old bolt out... These things work, but you have to be ultra carefull with them, as they really tend to snap off a lot, and drilling them out is near impossible... I almost always just drill out the offending bolt, and tap the hole the next size bigger...


Next on the hit list for me is the hex bit accessories they sell for drills... The screw driver aspects are so common, that most people don't really think much about them... There are important differences though... The single best one you should have, and should not try driveing screws without, is the screw guide... Its a hex drive bit holder that is 3 or 5 inches long (3 being the more usefull size most of the time) and surrounding the holder is a metal sleeve you can slide down over the screw to prevent you from slipping off the screw... Most folks I know call these things "finger savers"... There is very little that is as painfull as slipping off the screw head, and driveing the screwdriver into your fingers... I took a chunk out of a finger, almost down to the bone back in the late 90's... Since then, I always use these things... Try to avoid the ones with a plastic sleeve... You do not need to see the screw as they claim, and plastic breaks...


That's only one of the hex drive widgets... There are bit holders that lock the bits in... There are hex base drills... There are units that have a pilot drill on one side, and then you flip it over to drive the screw... Nut drivers... You name it, they make it in a hex base drive... The locking units market themselves as being nice for a quick change of bits... They do work ok, however, they make your drill longer, which can be a problem in tight places... You also need to consider that as you stack more hex adapters on the end of the drill, you introduce more slop into the system... Slop makes it hard to control what you're doing... The drill/driver two sided units are ok as well for limited use... The drill bit in the unit often is quite cheap, and will be dull quickly, or will break, so make sure you get a unit you can replace the actual drill bit involved... You will not have the guide sleeve aspect when you are useing the flip around units either, so be carefull while useing the driver aspect... Nut/socket drivers are quite nice... I have two styles... One lets you snap a regular socket onto the bit, so you have the complete range available to you... Problem is here, you usually end up with too much torque for the 1/4" hex shank, and you may break off the driver... The other style is a single forged unit for each size of nut from 1/2" down to 1/4"... They're forged around a hollow barrel, so you can drive the nut down over a longer bolt... These seem to hold up much longer than the socket drivers...



What it boils down to is that I stick with the finger savers, almost exclusively... Brand doesn't matter much with them, as I've had Makita, Dewalt, Ryobi, and Vermont American units, and they're all identical... They all chuck into the drill firmly, and hold the bit well, plus they're magnetic so they hold most screws by them selves, and they're prevent you from doing in a finger.


Something else, that may sound strange... When you are looking at the actual screw driver bits, there are a couple things to consider... You only really need a few to get you through most projects... You can add others if you run across an odd project... What you'll need are #1, #2, #3 phillips bits, 3/16", 1/4" slotted bits, and possibly a #2 square drive or Robertson bit... If you're building a lit of Ikea furniture, you'll want to pick up Torx (star drive) or hex (allen drive) bits in the sizes you'd need... (If you're outside the US, buy the whole array of Torx, and Robertson bits) The next thing to consider is the quality of the bit itself... This is hard to really tell, but here's a brief set of guides... Shiny bits are no good... You don't need/want chrome/zink plated bits... They're always soft and bend/wearout/break quickly... Most of the bits that are perfectly flat black suffer the same fate, though you can get a variety pack of these things pretty cheap that will give you just about every bit you'd ever come across... The "good" bits tend to all be a shade of gray, and have a surface that is just slightly rough (about as rough as a brown paper bag is the best I can describe it).  Sometimes they even have a little bit of a glittery quality to them... That would come I suspect from how they are made, at the molecular level... They're hardened, and the crystal structure of the metal is what that glitter is...


Remember, the slotted screw was never designed to be a power driven fastener... The Phillips, Robertson, Torx, and Allen are all designed to be driven... If you can avoid useing a slotted screw, I suggest you do so when useing a drill...


Happy Holidays!

Posted by Backstage at December 14, 2003 06:16 PM
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