Teaching - Drilling

[Stanleymonkey]

I am lucky enough to be in a position where I get to teach woodworking to kids 5-11 each week. Some projects and some weeks go better than others!

As a result, you end up thinking what can you tweak and do a bit better. Drilling for some kids can be really frustrating - so I want to share what I do and see what people think.

I'll break this into a few posts as its not really that interesting!!! One long post will send you to sleep!


First up - pistol grip drills

Maybe I've been unlucky - but I just don't like these. They either seem poor quality inside or the crank handle comes loose. I think I have been unlucky as when I did find some good ones they had a small chuck. Range between £10 and £20 so a set of 6 can be a lot of money with not massive options to pick up second hand. If you consider that you need a set of these AND a set of the straight ones then you see why these get left off.


Egg Beater Drills

I've been collecting a few of the Stanley 5803 drills. The gears are enclosed. Easy to keep them oiled / greased. Keeps their fingers from getting pinched and if I have to support the drill (especially when they are first learning) then my fingers don't get chewed up either! These can be picked up at fairs / on ebay etc. Trying to get enough of these so that there is a set always ready to use even if one gets dropped or a chuck falls apart etc.

I have seen another Stanley design with encased gears - but I can't find the model number / get a picture of it right now.

 

[aet1]

A great age to teach. Pistol grip hand drills are dire! The force on the handle is not in line with the drill bit - making it hard to drill properly.
Do you get another pupil to sight the drill from the side to help the driller keep it perpendicular until they get the hang of it?

 

[TheUnicorn]

I've not seen the pistol grip sort before, they look like you would constantly be scraping your knuckles.

 

[stuckinthemud]

Pistol grips are awful. Egg beaters work ok but can be tricky as spur bits can catch and jam. I have had good experiences teaching 8 and 9 year olds 1:1 to use battery drills - I think we were using McAlistair 16v 2-speed drill/driver. Taught them how to fix using Philips type screws at the same time- drill the pilot hole, switch bit for driver and fix - learn about keyless chucks, clutch, correct power, soft start, reverse. Bonus is no snapped bits, lost several 2mm bits when tired/frustrated little arms dropped the eggbeater a tad too much. Didn’t loose any when I switched to a power drill

 

[Stanleymonkey]

I've not seen the pistol grip sort before, they look like you would constantly be scraping your knuckles.

That might have been another one of my not liking reasons. I think if the crank gets at bit of a bend in it you can get into all sorts of problems

 

[Stanleymonkey]

Pistol grips are awful. Egg beaters work ok but can be tricky as spur bits can catch and jam. I have had good experiences teaching 8 and 9 year olds 1:1 to use battery drills - I think we were using McAlistair 16v 2-speed drill/driver

I have used a cordless drill once or twice with kids. I think 8/9 would be a good age to start off. Do you mean the bits with a sharp centre point?

 

[Fitzroy]

I am lucky enough to be in a position where I get to teach woodworking to kids 5-11 each week.

My boys are precisely that age and trying to teach them woodworking is very trying, although I've always had more patience with other people's children then my own. They have mastered the hammer, after a few sore thumbs, and they like the battery drill so an egg beater drill as a stocking filler could be on the cards for them.

When I was building my workshop I had a helper who decided to get stuck in without me, I thought it cute and took a photo but the wife rightly berated me after spotting the Stanley knife! Oops.

 

[stuckinthemud]

Yes, wood bits tend to have a sharp spike in the centre where high speed drill bits are more of a triangular shape

 

[Stanleymonkey]

My boys are precisely that age and trying to teach them woodworking is very trying, although I've always had more patience with other people's children then my own. They have mastered the hammer, after a few sore thumbs, and they like the battery drill so an egg beater drill as a stocking filler could be on the cards for them.

When I was building my workshop I had a helper who decided to get stuck in without me, I thought it cute and took a photo but the wife rightly berated me after spotting the Stanley knife! Oops.

Did you hide his ashtray behind the board?

 

[Stanleymonkey]

Next Thrilling Installment - Drill Bits!!

I don't tend to use these in hand drills with children. I know they are meant for wood but...

The super sharp point ends are a nightmare! If anyone walks around with the drill. Holds it down by their leg or leaves it in a weird position on the bench. Someone gets jabbed. They are also the first part of the bit to get damaged or blunted in day to day use.

I much prefer these:

They just stand up to regular use better and the tips can take a bit more rough handling.

Question for you guys - can they be sharpened easily - is it worth it?

I keep seeing sharpening gadgets for drill bits - some are cheap and some are ridiculously expensive.

This is under a tenner and I am tempted - is it just a gimmick?


The other reason I prefer the twist drills is that that they fit / locate nicely into the depression left by a centre punch.

I encourage using centre punches - I know that sounds like an over the top faff. But hammers are normally out anyway and I sprinkle some punches around if there is lots of drilling to do.

A lot of kids can see that it helps get the hole on target and don't mind the extra step at all. For the older ones I talk about it as a life skill - mark holes on a wall with a punch / big old nail and you will have more chance drilling the rawlplugs for your shelves in the right place.

I am tempted to try some spring loaded punches. But standard centre punches are so cheap and unbreakable that I don't think I need to. But they do seem cool!!

 

[wurglesnash357]

That style of drill bit [cue discussion and eventual argument about whether it's called a drill bit or just a drill...] is called a lip-and-spur type by some, and a brad-point type by others [cue another discussion...] It cuts a cleaner hole in soft wood than a conventional jobber's drill, because the lips cut the wood fibres rather than just digging them up. The spur makes it easier to position the hole accurately, especially with larger drills.

A jobber's drill, if properly sharp, can make just as nasty a cut as the lip-and-spur type, and in twenty-plus years of teaching 11-16 year olds I never had cause to send a pupil for patching up. Of course, cheap or badly sharpened drills of either type will cut poorly and require a lot more effort, which in itself is a safety issue. Minor scrapes and nicks are a good reminder that cutting tools are designed to cut!

I eventually went over to battery-powered hand drills, for most of the reasons StuckintheMud gives, and replaced all the slotted screws in the stockroom with Pozidrive. Unless a kid is going on to be a classic furniture restorer there is little point teaching them the old ways of doing things.

In my home workshop I have done much the same, though I still have my own (and my father's) lifetime collection of screws and tools for special jobs. That said, I can't remember the last time I used my open-geared Stanley drill brace which cost me 25/6d in 1961.

Les

 

[Stanleymonkey]

That's quite an impressive safety record. They should increase pay for each year without any accidents.

I've always found with the younger ones that the very pointy ends finds stuff to dig into. If I get a drill sharpener that might become an issue with properly sharpened bits as well. The cordless drills sound nice but being at the primary end of things we never really have the set up for storing and charging drills and batteries.

 

[cowtown_eric]

theres always push drills....

 

[mwinfrance]

I thought ( crazy thought ) maybe a clockwork drill, so put that into DDG, and found that indeed yes they exist(ed).Totally unsuitable for what you want as they were invented back in 1854 by a dentist George Fellows Harrington for his dentistry work.

But , as the patents must have run out long ago, there is an opportunity, ( which I'll pass on ) a Clockwork Drill for small kids to use.

 

[aet1]

That style of drill bit [cue discussion and eventual argument about whether it's called a drill bit or just a drill...] is called a lip-and-spur type by some, and a brad-point type by others [cue another discussion...] It cuts a cleaner hole in soft wood than a conventional jobber's drill, because the lips cut the wood fibres rather than just digging them up. The spur makes it easier to position the hole accurately, especially with larger drills.

A jobber's drill, if properly sharp, can make just as nasty a cut as the lip-and-spur type, and in twenty-plus years of teaching 11-16 year olds I never had cause to send a pupil for patching up. Of course, cheap or badly sharpened drills of either type will cut poorly and require a lot more effort, which in itself is a safety issue. Minor scrapes and nicks are a good reminder that cutting tools are designed to cut!

I eventually went over to battery-powered hand drills, for most of the reasons StuckintheMud gives, and replaced all the slotted screws in the stockroom with Pozidrive. Unless a kid is going on to be a classic furniture restorer there is little point teaching them the old ways of doing things.

In my home workshop I have done much the same, though I still have my own (and my father's) lifetime collection of screws and tools for special jobs. That said, I can't remember the last time I used my open-geared Stanley drill brace which cost me 25/6d in 1961.

Les

I'll start gently with a mention of the worse accident I had with a child, a horrid 13 year old tyke. "Sir, John's cut his leg" - blood spurting from calf, an artery cut. "I cut it on a sharp thing sticking out of the bench". I'm in my metalwork room, in the department we all leave our doors open. I followed the blood trail - into the changing area and then into the woodwork room, the horrid child had slipped out of my room, stolen a wood chisel, dropped it slicing his leg and stuffed it into a jacket pocket in the changing area before slipping back into my room to complain of a sharp thing sticking out of a bench. Apart from that in 18 years I only had splinters to remove.

After serving my sentence as a secondary school teacher I joined the county school inspectorate I had to investigate and deal with the aftermath of a teacher cutting the end of his finger off with a table saw. He was, I think, a history teacher doing some after school woodwork and had no training at all to use the saw, the county workshop rules and regulations book was years out of date, HSE were not impressed, but it gained me an extra year's work as I was to be made redundant and instead re-wrote the book and trained / re-trained all the county woodwork and metalwork teachers to the current circular saws regulations.

It's a drill bit - "FACT", which I can prove it from my 1963 Dormer drilling and cutting speed book. More accurately a" twist drill bit" which I think is the name used by Whitworth when he invented them in 1860, the twist being the way they were made, not that they rotate in use.

 

[benitod]

theres always push drills....
View attachment 157245

They were called yankee drill drivers. I had one from Stanley for so many years, until electric reversible drills came to the scene.

 

[Dave Moore]

They were called yankee drill drivers. I had one from Stanley for so many years, until electric reversible drills came to the scene.

I once asked a joiner if he used a Yankee drill driver when in a hurry to which he replied’ no, I use a hammer then!’

regards,
Dave

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The Birmingham screwdriver.

 

[Sean Hellman]

I have worked with a lot of children mainly years 5 and 6. We use palm drills, that is a jobbers drill set into a wooden handle, up to 10mm nor smaller than 4mm even these can get broken. Some kids can take ages to drill a hole, but that is not a problem. With bigger holes1/2inch to 25 mm we use a cordless, under adult supervision and with the 25mm usually we have a hand on the drill. No accidents yet. Notreally tried out the bit and brace, but these should work and the T bar auger always works well.

 

[stuckinthemud]

Now that is a good idea’