Long drills

I had an interesting problem the other day, Needed to drill a 1/16"hole down in a deep pocket. As per usual, I had the small drill mounted in a pin vice, but was still a few inches too short. racking my brain for a quick soloution, I mounted the pin vice into a Wood Bit Extender. Worked perfectly, perhaps a bit wobbly, but it did the job.

Hi nothing wrong with using a wood bit extender if you have one, very good. If you havn't you can always use a piece of silver steel drill the end for drill size and loctite the drill in the end. You can always do the same for taps to tap down deep holes.

David

Your advice is exactly a day too late for me David, Iast night I shortened a part to allow the tap to reach the threaded portion, this morning I would have done what you suggest

Brian

Here's a couple of long taps I made recently. And an Allen key although the hexagon is tapped in to a slightly smaller than across points on hexagon only.

4mm tap 5mm tap and 3mm hexagon key.

David

These are some of the extended drills I have accumulated. Most of the extension material I get from rails and guides in discarded ink jet printers and drills or cutter is retained by whatever is convenient at the time. I've used grub screws, press fit, deformed the tube wall into notch or flat.

Longest extension I have made was a 1.5m length of 1/2" diameter steel bar drilled to accept a 16mm wood flat-bit which I used to drill vertically downwards through the various noggins in a studded bedroom wall in order to run wiring to a new light switch without having to do any subsequent redecorating.

Ian P

Nice job Ian, thanks for sharing.

Do you need an extra long screw after drilling with those long extension drills?

Or maybe just an extra-long screwdriver??

Long screwdrivers are, or were, available. Can't remember where or when I got them, but two. One for cross head screws, the other for Pozidrive. Both are about 500mm long. Yes, they have been used, but not often.

Howard

I have a cheap chuck type tap wrench that I use for hard to reach places. I modified it by making the sliding T handle removable and then filing a 13mm hex end on the wrench. The wrench still works as normal but for difficult and awkward holes I can use a 13mm socket (with as many socket extensions as required) or I can use it with a ratchet spanner. Obviously you need to be careful not to snap taps when using a single sided driver but with caution anything is possible.

Martin