Created by Randy Wilson (Randy803@gmail.com) Public Domain You may freely distribute, post, or publish.

Absolute Beginners Series

Drilling on a lathe Gunsmith Shop Notes Section 3

Created by Randy Wilson (Randy803@gmail.com) Public Domain You may freely distribute, post, or publish.

DRILLING ON THE LATHE Whenever you set out to drill a hole on a lathe you should first use a spot drill (center drill) to insure you hit the center of your work piece, regular drill bits will wander due to the flex in their long shafts. A drill started center will tend to remain center throughout the drilling process, on the flip side a crooked start will remain crooked.

Notice the center drill has very little shank and thus is rigid and runs true.

Different materials will require you to adjust your lathes rpm and the rate you feed your drill into the work piece. When drilling steel you will go slower than when drilling softer aluminum. When drilling steel I like to have a spray bottle of water based coolant to continually wet the bit. To cool aluminum there is nothing better than WD40 as it cools and keeps the aluminum from sticking to the drill bit.

Shop Note: WD40s only real use in my opinion is for machining aluminum, nothing works better to keep it from melting to your tools and binding. WD40 however is a horrible general lubricant and even worse break free oil.
Common culprits when drilling are heat and chip build up. I am not going to go into a science lesson here but you need to understand a drill bit only cuts at its tip, the rest of the twist is for removing cut material from the hole like a conveyor belt. You need to know a little about drill bits before you get started. Hard cutting steels require high quality drills. You can buy the cheap Chinese drill bits but save them for aluminum. Import drill bits from China are junk in my experience regardless of their composition. Drill bits can be made from different metals you can read all about elsewhere I am just going to tell you what you need. Buy a

Created by Randy Wilson (Randy803@gmail.com) Public Domain You may freely distribute, post, or publish.

set of less expensive bits to do all your soft work such as aluminum and then buy yourself a set of USA made HSS (High Speed Steel) bits for use on your tough work. Drill bits are like knives in that they work best when sharp. One of the best investments I have made for my shop is in a Drill Doctor sharpener. Anyone can use one and it will make even the cheapest drills sharp (they just wont hold the sharpness long). I love my Drill Doctor and out of all my tools it earns its keep the best. If you buy a Drill Doctor it will come with a DVD to show you how to use it and it is easy so dont fret. I am now going to walk you through a drilling operation so you can see how I do it. We will assume we have a 2 inch piece of unknown mild steel we need to drill a 1 inch hole 4 inches deep in. First place the steel round work piece in the lathe and zero it. Then use a center drill to start the hole.

Since we are drilling a piece of unknown steel we are going to keep the rpm on the slow side, around 90rpm to 150rpm. Now slowly and gently feed the center cutting drill into the work piece. It is important not to force it into the steel, let it gently find its mark and slowly apply pressure until it starts to dig in. Once you are cutting you can go ahead and apply some pressure to get your pilot hole. If this was aluminum I would spin my lathe up to about 200rpm. Now in theory when you are drilling large bore holes you should start with smaller drill bits and work up to larger ones, I tend not to do this I just use the final size drill I need right from the start (I am impatient and it works).

Created by Randy Wilson (Randy803@gmail.com) Public Domain You may freely distribute, post, or publish.

Once you have your drill bit mounted start moving it forward slowly and letting it cut. It will go pretty easy at first as the chips will just roll out. As you drill in about an inch it is going to slow down and you will need to constantly back the bit out, brush it off and spray it with coolant. The deeper you drill the more frequently you must back out the bit to remove the chips and cool it. You will learn to feel the tail stock feed and know when to back it out but until you learn you cant go wrong going slow. Once you gain experience you will speed up the lathe and learn to do the job faster and more efficiently. While you are learning keep the pace slow and keep your tools cool. A few things on aluminum I need to mention, just because it is soft doesnt mean you can run balls out it will melt on your tooling. You can run a faster RPM but you still need to back out frequently to remove the chips or they will weld right to your bit. Using generous amounts of WD40 will really help when drilling aluminum, it is an old timers trick that really works. The best piece of advice you can benefit from as a beginning machinist is to go slow and make small cuts. It takes a lot less time to go slow than it does to have to extract a broken drill bit and start over.

Shop Note: generally speaking the smaller the drill bit diameter the faster you want the RPM and the slower the feed rate. Small drills will break easily so spin the lathe up and go real slow.