Sherwood Jobber Drills - anything known?

Hi. I'm contemplating buying a set of 6-10 x 0.1 mm jobber drills. Since I realised that drills are very much 'get what you pay for' things, I've been buying Dormer or Guhring, but the Dormer set seems to retail at a fairly eye-watering 180 pounds or so. Cromwell do a set of their 'Sherwood' branded drills for 112, but I don't have any experience with the brand. Because it seems to be exclusive to Cromwell I worry that these may be generic far-Eastern tools branded with a reassuringly British sounding name. I think I'm inclined to stump up for Dormers, but if there is anyone out there who can tell me Sherwood is fine, well seventy quid is seventy quid.

Writing this I realise someone is going to say 'buy an empty box and populate it as and when needed', which is doubtless good advice (so thank you!) and is perhaps what I should do, but I'd still be interested to hear of any experiences with Sherwood stuff.

Regards, Robin

Hello Robin, I've been using Sherwood taps, dies and drills for the last ten or eleven years and have found them to be good quality and reliable. Hope this helps.

Rick

Robin,

I use Sherwood cutting tools commercially, (that is for toolmaking and production work), and they perform well as general workshop tools.However, they are not equal to top brands. If you do some more research on drill selection you will find that the range and scope of drill design is vast. I doubt you will be disappointed with sherwood, but if you have a big project with especially tough or difficult materials then a more suitably selected individual drill could be purchased. Roy.

Robin if you go on the RDG Engineering website They are selling presto branded drills and

drill sets at greatly reduced prices and just as good as dormer

Best Wishes Martin

Edited By Martin Walsh 1 on 30/03/2014 22:46:22

Edited By Martin Walsh 1 on 30/03/2014 22:53:14

I think the cheaper dormer and presto stuff is now made in china, the sherwood tools are made in leicester. I have bought a lot of their stuff over the past few months and found it very good.

Some of the Dormer drills I have are made in Brazil.

Bert

Sherwood Tools are certainly based in Wigston in Leicester. Both Sherwood and Cromwell are based at 65, Chartwell Drive, Wigston. So I susupect that Sherwood is a trading name for Cromwell. Are the drills actually manufactured in Leicester? Who knows? I suspect they may import the blanks and perhaps finish them here at best.

Being completely tight, I have a different take. Instead of an empty box, by a box of cheap drills and do a 'bubble sort'.

If you find a duff one, wear one out or break it - replace it with a decent one - probably from the stock of drills that you already have. Any that are any good or unused will stay in teh box.

In time, all your regularly used sizes will magically be replaced by decent drills.

That way the good drills will bubble up to the top you will always have a backup for rarely used sizes without spending a fortune.

Neil

I agree with Neil - we have the same philosophy here!

Having said that though I've never found the need to have 6 - 10 mm in 0.1 mm steps - 0.5 steps is quite adequate for me. I should add though that my interest is at the smaller end of things so, whilst you may not break a 10mm drill the life expectancy of those below (say) 2mm is likely to be fairly short. I do find it a great advantage to have the smaller drills in a box and quickly to hand.

Norman

Edited By NJH on 31/03/2014 10:41:37

Thanks for all your replies - sounds like Sherwood or Presto should be fine. I like the 'bubble sort' idea and shall implement that I think.

I hadn't heard of Presto and had a look at their website. It seems that Kennametal bought the brand some time ago to acquire the prestige of Presto's Sheffield heritage, but the Sheffield address is now only a distribution centre. I suspect the same sort of thing is true for Cromwell - both Sherwood and Kennedy Tools are registered at their Wigston address but I doubt they actually make anything there. I read a review of some Erbauer machine on the Screwfix website once which, without apparent irony, lauded the product for its 'solid German build quality' - so these marketing dodges work! After I looked at the RDG website page for Presto drills I remembered them as saying 'Made in Sheffield' whereas in fact they just say 'Sheffield', so I'm certainly not immune.

Sorry - wandering off topic.

Thanks again for your help,

Regards, Robin.

I bought a load of Sherwood roughing mills on offer in there sales leaflet and they were shipped direct from Sandvik so it looks like they buy in quality products.

I have had no problem with dormer since Sandvic moved the drills to Brazil and the end mills to Italy.

Steve

Hi Robin

I thought I had sent you a message but it appears to have disappeared.

If you would like to contact me I may be able to help you out with the Sherwood Jobber Drills

regards

Lee

I have used Sherwood jobber drills for some time, without any real problems.

Cromwell supply Industry, so cannot afford to have major customers unhappy with their products.

If they relied on Model Engineers for their income, they would have ceased trading LONG ago.

(I am sure that Kennedy and Sherwood are the names for products exclusive to Cromwell, sourced, in all probability, from where they can get the best price/quality match)

I use drills with 0.1mm increments for as final tapping, having roughed out to the nearest 0.5mm with a coarser set.

Some Cromwell products seem pricey, but you almost always get what you pay for. Overall, I am not unhappy with what I have bought from them.

Howard

I ended up buying the Presto set from RDG as recommended by Martin Walsh. So far they seem very good - razor sharp and cut dead to size, so far as I can measure. Nice metal box too!

Thanks again to all for advice/suggestions.

Lee - I have PM'd you.

Regards, Robin.

Just out of interest I have a new set of the Sherwood 6-10 x 0.1 mm jobber drills sat on my shelf I would be prepared to sell for £60 (this includes delivery)

Would like to use the money to buy something else