this helps SO much. i feel like so many woodworking tutorials ask you to acquire a ton of expensive and large pieces of equipment, both of which i can’t house in my small 2 bed apartment. but this is so reasonable and works so well.
I use a small plastic mirror, with a clearance hole drilled through the centre. Place mirror on workpiece. Drill workpiece through the hole! If drill is not perpendicular then drill and its reflection will look bent. Just line up the drill with its own reflection and then start drilling.
I use a drill guide to make a hole in a short piece of 2x2 scrap and use that as my portable jig. The drill guide also lets you drill at angles to make angle drilling jigs that can be clamped to your work for cutting pocket holes and the like.
Absolutely brilliant!! I've never been able to drill a straight through hole no matter how hard I try! Problem solved!!!! Love all of your great tips!!!
That actually makes a lot of sense so I might give that a try in the future. I just put on handles on my wall cabinets that required making two holes per door; they came out great but certain holes were a little slanted so I had to widen them a little so the screws straighten out. This will save me a lot of time once the counter tops come in and I can finally put in the base cabinets doors.
This will sound a bit exotic but this tip is for those viewers that have a palm router with plunge base. With a plunge type spiral bit, you can effectively drill holes perpendicular on any size work piece so long as you can reach it. Pretty sure there are cordless routers if you don’t want to be tethered to a power cord and would be very portable . Just a thought.
I have a small router and your solution is so obvious and perfect for my current project that I am kicking myself for not thinking of it myself. Thanks.
Great tip. I need to be able to accurately drill the edges of boards for dowels for a custom-built storage unit soI'm going to use your tip to drill the perpendicular holes through the pkywood pieces shown in the video to make a jig for situations when a router is too cumbersome to use.
This sort of stuff is gold. I came for the video but I always read through the comments and left with a great tip like this. I have a router which will now be put to a new great use! Thanks!
@@bp8067 im gonna try and save all that cutting and 3d print several of these at various hole sizes. imagine a 6x1x1 inch block with holes every inch of various standard drill sizes
That's a pretty nice solution when the required hole is shallow relative to the length of the drill bit. But - what do you recommend if the hole depth is comparable to the length of the bit?
I usually use some scrap 4x4 posts. Cut 2 pieces perfectly square (on the ends) with a miter saw, about 6” long each. Then lay the blocks flat at right angles to one another, so that the inside corner that is formed is where your desired hole will be. When you align the bit into the corner of the two pieces of wood, and the wood is flat against the drilling surface, then you know that the bit is straight in the X and Y directions. If that doesn’t make sense I can take a photo. Honestly the method in this video is ridiculously complicated compared to the two 4x4 block method. Edit: check this video at 3:30 mark: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IxpRhtPejJs.html It’s basically the same concept, except this guy cut a single piece of wood to contain a 90 deg angle instead of butting two 4x4 blocks against one another (or smaller wood if your bit is less than 3.5” long)
Woodworking without a saw! Good jig. Have not seen this before in my 70 years. However, every woodworker should endeavor to own a decent drill press. Thanks.
@@cosador But, a counter argument: I am restoring a wooden boat at present, and there are zero straight bits of timber in it-so a tiny jig like this is perfect. 95% of the time, I simply could not use a drill press on board, because there's not enough space to use one. Two thumbs up from me.
I like the concept of using multiple pieces glued together to make a hole jig. Could make a jig for different size holes using the same concept. Was planning of making holes to hold coins for different types of wooden cell phone stands of various sizes. I would have used a drill bit the size of the holes inserted into the holes of all the cut pieces before glueing all the small pieces together. Other than that it was a good idea.
Ahhh! Nice. I wasn't sure if there was a technique to drill a straight hole without a press other than practice, so I Googled it and found your video. Thanks!
Could have used Metal Tube in the Build for the first hole size & inserted other close fitting tubes for smaller sized holes (reducing the number of Jigs you'd have make) OK, quite limited given tube sizes available, but should be good for 2 or 3 other sizes ??
I would suggest use even thinner material, laid up in more layers. At 1mm thick per jig layer, there is far less likelihood of each hole being skewed. This will reduce the accumulation of error.
Hi it's a fantastic good idea and with the use of cheap tools , so many videos on here have been made with expensive machinery which to me is ironic. But because your idea is of wood won't the hole wear out after a few goes because u take some of the wood as you still.
I think the idea behind this is that it's fast, cheap, and easy, so you can use it until it's out of spec, then make another. That way, all you're losing is scrap MDF, not wearing down a more expensive jig.
I have problems drilling vertically into concrete floor. After drilling, I insert stainless steel shaft (about 3" long and 8mm diam). Most times the shafts are at a slight angle and can be problematic for my work.
Any recommendations on how to drill straight on a surface that is NOT flat??? ....i need to drill a hole in my oil pump to tap and install a thread insert for the tensioner to be torqued down to specification..... And i need to do this while it's on the engin coz it's too much effort to remove the oil pump
Hi, thanks for your video-hint! I have to drill a vertical log horizontally, but the surface is not regular... Do you have any suggestion? the drill bit is 22mm x 500mm, and the log is about 400mm diameter. thanks a lot
Thanks Tony! I wear the gloves as a continuity tool amongst other things, I can't always get to do videos sequentially and my hands might get paint on them one day and then maybe old engine grease on them another, but this way the viewer is not confused. Very observant of you! Thank you for commenting.
What if you need to drill into an uneven surface perfectly straight? I see that jig working for flat surfaces, but im working on a guitar that has a "carved top". The back is flat, so it lays perfectly flat, but the top is sort of domed. If I put that jig on the surface I need to drill, I would be able to rock it back & forth. The only way I could get that jig to work would be if I had the reverse radius cut into the jig... FML!
Spectt if it lays perfectly flat you would need to build a mini table to place over the curved area, using 4 dowels of equal length and a 3 mm sheet as the table top to achieve just the height needed.drill the same size hole as in the original jig through the table top in the necessary position. The table top (for lack of a better description) with its hole acts as an additional “layer” to the original jig
OMG! I understand what you mean, and that would totally work! I'm picturing 2 perfectly even stacks of books on each side, and something else perfectly flat to bridge the gap. Then use the newly minted flat surface as the surface to place the jig, going thru the sacrificial "bridge" and into the guitar! OMG I would of NEVER thought of that. It's already been sitting on my work bench for over a month while I was stumped. I was honestly just waiting for the time to go to harbor freight and pickup a cheap drill press, soley to drill [4] 11mm holes for installing a tune-o-matic bridge on a guitar... Awesome! I can't wait to try this. You literally just saved me $60 bucks! Thank You!👍👍🎸🤘👨🎤
Thanks a lot for this! I have used a drill press before (rented) but am not ready yet to buy one. This approach is the one I am going to use for those few straight holes I need.
