Pillar drill or drill stand

legemaine · 29 Oct 2014

Hi, I'm a newbie to the forum. My principle experience in woodworking has come from what I've learnt renovating a large timber frame farm slowly over the last 10 yrs. Typically tasks include limited oak frame construction and simple furniture items such as radiator covers. I've struggled with a haphazard workshop for years, but having nearly completed my garage and workshop, I'm looking to spend a little money to buy the tools that I know from experience are going to assist me.

My current dilemma is concerns drilling peg holes for oak framing. Typical timbers I work with may be upto 100mm width and 80mm deep, and peg holes are typically 19-20mm. I've drilled peg holes in the past free hand with a hired high torque drill - my corded couldn't handle the torque, but in hindsight they may have been due to using an auger bit and the high feed rate that implies. As you can imagine, the holes have been less than perfect and very time consuming.

I'm considering moving to either a drill press or drill stand and a high torque drill, but need to think through the following

- Do I really need the high torque to drill 20mm dia 80mm holes, or was that incorrect drill/feed speed choice?
- If I do need that kind of torque, I guess it takes me into the large end of pillar drills - many posts seem to suggest a secondhand drill might be more cost effective here. Drill plus stand wise, I can see a top end Makita that will provide the torque and fit a stand.
- Can I get the throat/quill length that I need from a stand - even the top end ones don't seem to offer quill lengths above 70mm. Some of the bigger drill presses seem to offer this

Any comments or advice would be welcome

Thanks

Phil Pascoe · 29 Oct 2014

I would suggest you looked at a better quality auger (and keep it SHARP) before you spend a lot of money. You shouldn't be having that big a problem with 20mm holes. Choose your route after that. Welcome, btw.

heimlaga · 30 Oct 2014

For 20 mm holes I would buy a drill like this and drill freehand:
http://www.makita.se/tool/15243/DS4011.html
Hitachi and DeWalt make some fairly similar ones.

I work with log building and used an elderly Naula machine with fairly similar specifications as the Makita which I refered to. It was just not big enough for 38 mm holes and after a few smallish projects it just burned out completely one day. Though for the occasional 20 mm hole it was excellent.
Then I bought this http://www.eibenstock.com/index_engl.as ... e=21100005
It is excellent for drilling 40 cm deep holes with a 38 mm auger bit.

I cannot see any need for a drill stand in this kind of work. After a while you will learn to keep the drill vertical.

Auger bits are the way to go. Spade bits do not extract the chips and do not produce a straight hole. However I suggest that you buy a high quality auger bit as some Chineese ones tend to be thicker forther up so they bind in the hole instead of having a tiny bit of relief. Others have totally wrong cutting geometry.

cusimar9 · 30 Oct 2014

Hi and welcome! I recently completed a small timber frame log store (see sig) and I had no problem drilling 19mm peg holes with an 18v battery powered ryobi drill. I did however struggle drilling out the mortices as the batteries kept overheating. That was using 25mm augers for 60+ mm deep mortices. However this was remedied by swapping between two batteries. It certainly wasn't ideal though. A drill press would help and would be essential to properly drill offset (drawbored) peg holes, I made a bit of a mess of mine by trying to drill them freehand. From my experience though I do think it would be a nuisance to try and offer huge oak beams up to a drill press, far easier to bring the tool to the wood.

heimlaga · 31 Oct 2014

I started thinking......

What about a hand cranked boring machine. They were originally made for timberframing and seem to turn up now and then in countried where timberframing was proctised bak then.
Here is an example http://www.myoldtools.com/boring.htm

woodfarmer · 31 Oct 2014

I have used up to 38mm flat bits to drill holes in constructional timber with electric drill ( mains powered). But freehand might not be accurate enough for you. Maybe a good quality bench drill that you move about taking it to the timber?

Oddly enough I saw some Clark drills in Warrior that impressed me, probably not the models you need for this job though.