How to drill a beam under the pipe. How to drill a log or a thick beam? Of course with a screw drill

We continue to deal with the equipment with which you can work on wood. In general, wood can be drilled with different drills, in the last article we analyzed efficiency, figured out how and where it is recommended to use it.

There are a lot of types of wood drills and very often it happens that they are ideal for some jobs, while not suitable for others at all. That's why House master must understand what and how to drill a tree. Today's article will be about a screw drill, also called a twist drill.

It is made of wood and will help out in cases where it is necessary to drill a deep hole. For example, you have a log house through which you need to stretch water pipe or bundle of cables. And only a twist drill will cope with a thick tree. Of course, nothing prevents you from trying to use the usual one, however, as I said, drilling them is inconvenient and not a fact that it will be possible to complete the job.

As you can see, the tip is made in the form of a thin thread, which helps to screw the drill perfectly into initial stage drilling. Chip ejection occurs due to the helical edges (like any drill or brace), so drilling is easy. The shank is most often 6-sided, so the tool is securely fastened in the chuck of a drill or screwdriver.

It is necessary to work with such a drill at low speeds, so it is best to use it with speed control or a powerful screwdriver with a high tightening torque.

But it is best, if possible, to use a low-speed drill with a speed of up to 800 (I recommend a rebir drill).

The most common use of such equipment is the fastening of logs. Workers who assemble log cabins often come to our store and they buy "spirals" with a diameter of 25-28-30 mm and a length of 450-600 mm. As you know, in order to fasten the logs of the log house to each other, it is necessary to drill them from above and insert iron fittings into the hole made. It is very important that the hole is drilled deep, which is why a long drill is needed.

The length range is as follows:

- 220 mm
- 450 mm
- 600 mm (the most popular).

To make holes in a tree with a diameter of 30 mm to a depth of 600 mm, you need a very powerful power tool, so we recommend using a drill with at least 1000 watts (and that is unlikely to be enough), as well as screwdrivers with a torque of at least 36 Nm. Of course, the most preferred option is a low-speed drill, which has a power of 1200 watts, you can’t imagine better for such work. It is very powerful and easily scrolls such a thick drill through solid wood.

The prices for such "consumables" are rather high, at least they are much more expensive than forstner drills and drills. For example, 22 * ​​600 costs around 300 rubles. And the thickest ones come with a price tag for a piece of rubles. They are taken only when it is necessary to drill a hole in the log house under sewer pipe etc.

However, given that the drill is powerful and heavy, it performs specific work, then you should not bother about the price. Because all the same, nothing else can drill through 3 logs at once.

Drilling a hole with a drill bit

At first glance, when there is a question about how to drill a hole in wood, most people have no doubts: you think that wood is not metal and is easy to drill. Yes, this is partly true if you want to make not a hole in the wood, but a banal hole. And in order to drill a hole in wood correctly and efficiently, you need to listen to the advice of processing masters. wooden structures, who are also called wood modelers.

Rules for drilling holes in wood

The rules are definitely simple, but following them will save you time, frustration, and expendable materials as wooden blanks and already finished parts. So, what you need to pay attention to:

• Before drilling, you need to accurately mark the place for the hole.
• Choose the right one cutting tool. This refers to drills for working with wood, countersinks, spade drills with a drilling depth limiter and annular cutters of the desired diameter.
• When drilling, the tool (mostly a drill) must be held strictly vertically.
• Use drills designed for specific material only.
• Wooden parts must be firmly fixed in a vise.
• The cutting tool should be pressed tightly, but with a uniform force.

Drilling holes in wood

Countersinking the screw head hole

Let's start drilling simple holes for a screw or. Usually these holes are small in diameter and it is not difficult to drill them. The only thing to do is to countersink the hole before drilling, that is, turn the surface of the wood under the screw head. To do this, fix the wood tightly and make a recess in it with a countersink a little more than the height of the screw head or self-tapping screw. After that, firmly pressing the drill of the desired diameter to the surface, drill the hole you need.

There are situations when you need to drill a "blind" hole for a tenon joint. To do this, you need to use a drill with a limiter, which is put on the drill according to the size of the drilling depth.

It is more difficult to make holes in large diameter wood, as the use of conventional cylindrical drills chip the surface of the material, spoiling it. appearance. To successfully cope with this task, blade drills and annular cutters are used.

Drilling with flute drills

Fountain drill

For successful work when drilling with a drill bit, secure the wood firmly in a vise and press the tip of the drill against the surface of the material. Then drill (at low speed) a hole until the tip of the drill appears at the bottom of the wood. Stop drilling and remove the drill bit from the hole, then turn the wood over, clamp it in a vise and drill the hole on the other side. This will prevent the bar from splitting when drilling.

Hole cutter drilling

Hole cutter for wood

An annular cutter is used for drilling holes in wood with a diameter of more than 38 mm. Drilling begins with a pilot drill of small diameter, structurally connected with the cutter in one piece. This ledge serves as a guide for the annular cutter.

Here are some tips from the pros that will surely help you when drilling holes in wood:

a) for vertical drilling, you can set the square parallel to the drill;
b) if you often have to do carpentry work, get a special stand for a drill, which allows you to hold the tool strictly vertically, controls the depth of the holes;
c) be sure to use a vise when drilling to avoid splitting the wood;
d) so that the exit hole does not have chips, place an unnecessary bar under the wooden part and drill them together. Especially, this is applicable when making holes in a thin board;
e) if you do not have a drilling depth limiter, wrap the drill in the place of restriction with bright electrical tape or molar tape.

Imagine the situation: you need to drill a large diameter round hole in a log or tree that is in the forest or in another place where there is no way to connect to electricity (or there is simply no electric drill and a suitable crown). How to be?

There is one way to drill big hole in wood and logs without power tools, using only hand strength. However, to do this, you first need to make a simple fixture.

The first step is to make a homemade wood drill. To do this, cut off a piece of steel pipe that is suitable in size. The diameter is selected, depending on the diameter of the hole to be drilled, and the length, respectively, on the depth. Then the cutting teeth are set.

Main stages of work

In the end part of a homemade drill, it is necessary to drill a hole for an M12 stud or another diameter (depending on the pipe diameter used). After that, we cut off a piece of the stud of the required length and weld a self-tapping screw or screw to it at the end. The more it is, the better.

2 metal bars (round or square) must be welded to the top of the pipe to make it easier to turn the drill. More rods can be welded if necessary.

For high-quality performance of even such a simple procedure as drilling holes in wood products, you need the right mode and the appropriate tool. When choosing a drill for wood, you should take into account the characteristics of both the material being processed and the hole to be made. On the modern market there is a wide variety of drills designed to make holes in wood, so choosing a tool for solving certain technological problems will not be any particular problem.

Main types

The main parameter, depending on which the division of wood drills into different kinds, is the design of the working part. On this basis, wood drilling tools can fall into one of the following categories.

Drills of this type are used to make holes in wood with an average diameter of up to 25 mm. It is advisable to use such a tool in cases where not too strict requirements are imposed on the accuracy of geometric parameters, as well as on the quality of the holes. Among the most significant advantages of pen drills, low cost and ease of maintenance should be noted.

Hole type tools are designed for drilling large diameter holes. According to their design, wood crowns resemble a metal glass with a shank, on the working end of which cutting teeth are made. When such a drill rotates, its cutting teeth, interacting with the workpiece, cut a circle of the required diameter on its surface.

Spiral

Wood twist drills are also called screw drills. Their working part resembles a screw. They are used for drilling small holes in wood. Due to the special design of screw-type drills, when they are used, chips are effectively removed from the processing zone. The screw drill also provides high precision and exceptionally high quality processing.

These are tools with the help of which, in products made of wood, they create not through, but blind holes with a perfectly flat bottom. In addition, if you use such a wood drill with accessories, you can drill into wooden product square hole.

With the help of such tools, it is possible not only to drill wood, but also to make grooves of various configurations in wood products. Drill of this type most often used in cases where complex processing is required wooden parts, and in order to drill regular hole, use a twist drill, pen or core tool.

Milling drills are designed for drilling a round hole and its subsequent boring to the desired shape. Used when working with wood and thin metal

The tail part of drills designed for woodworking usually has cylindrical shape, but manufacturers also produce them with other shank configurations. So, on the modern market you can buy drills for woodworking, the shanks of which can be:

• triangular, optimally suited for fixing in a three-jaw chuck (torque is ideally transmitted to a tool with a triangular shank, and even very significant loads are not able to turn it in the chuck);
• hexagonal (you can install tools with such shanks both in a standard and in a three-jaw chuck, but at the same time there is a very high risk of turning the drill when severe loads are applied to it);
• conical (tools with this type of shanks are used mainly for equipping production equipment);
• square (rarely used form of shanks, which, however, provide high stability of the tool against turning in the chuck).

Areas of use and design features

As mentioned above, in order to drill a wood product with high quality, it is very important to choose the right drill bit. When making this choice, it is necessary to take into account both the characteristics of the material being processed (in particular, its hardness) and the type of hole to be made. That is why it is very important for home craftsmen and specialists whose activities are related to the processing of wooden blanks to understand both the varieties and functionality wood drill.

Spiral (screw) drills

A spiral, or screw, drill can be produced with two types of working tips: conical and with special undercutters. If we compare both types in terms of their degree of effectiveness, then it is almost on the same level. However, they differ in the load perceived by the tool in the process of wood processing. So, in the design of the working head of the drill with a cutter, there is a jumper, which causes significant loads transmitted to the entire body of the tool. They are deprived of such a disadvantage, which, in addition, are much better centered on the surface of the workpiece. The cone head immediately enters the material, and the drill does not lead to the side. Meanwhile, twist drills with undercutters, due to their design features, allow you to create holes in wood with higher accuracy.

Drilling wood with a spiral tool allows you to get accurate and neat holes with smooth edges and smooth surface inner walls. You can use tools of this type for drilling wood of any species and almost any hardness, as well as materials made on its basis (chipboard, MDF, plywood, etc.). If the drill is deepened into the material being processed at a low speed, then there is no need to frequently remove the tool from the hole being created to remove accumulated chips.

When designing and manufacturing screw drills, much attention is paid to their geometric parameters. This, in particular, includes the angle of inclination of the helical groove, as well as the ratio of the dimensions of the elements of the working part in the cross section. The angle of inclination of the helical groove and the degree of roughness of its working surface affect the efficiency of chip removal during machining. The geometry of the cross section of the working part determines strength characteristics drill.

The most vulnerable in terms of breakage are long wood drills, the diameter of which does not exceed 3 mm. The risk of breakage increases with the wrong selection of drilling modes, as well as with inaccurate use of the tool. All wood drills that are long should be handled very carefully. A long drill, which can be of any cross-sectional size, is used to create holes whose depth is 20–30 times their diameter.

The category of spiral also includes Lewis auger drills used to make deep holes of a significant diameter in a tree. The structural elements that make up such an auger drill are a massive spiral (auger) encircling the central rod of the tool.

In order for such a drill to be immersed in the material being processed in given point, on its working part there is a threaded tip. Since the outer surface of the screw is mirror-finished, the inner walls of the hole being made are also perfectly smooth. One more distinctive feature The design of this woodworking tool is a small groove angle, through which chips are removed from the processing area.

A spiral type tool designed for drilling wood is available in a wide range of working diameters. If you need to drill holes of large diameter, you should carefully consider the choice of equipment with which the drill will be used. In these cases, a low-speed device must be used, and not a conventional drill, which is not designed to work with a large diameter tool.

Drill bits

Inexpensive pen-type drills can be used to make deep holes of large diameters, for which dimensional accuracy and quality are not too high demands. They are produced in the range of diameters of 10-60 mm and various (including significant) lengths. If the length of the pen drill is not enough to make a deep hole in the tree, it can be increased using a special extension cord. However, when using such a device, which allows you to increase the processing depth by another 30 cm, extreme care should be taken, since the junction of the tool and the extension is not very rigid.

When drilling holes in a tree with the help of spade drills, it is also impossible to exert strong pressure on the tool, which is a rather fragile structure.

Forstner drills

With such a difficult technological task as drilling holes with a flat bottom in wood products, only a Forstner drill can handle it. Its cutting edges are located on the rim and side surface. Thanks to this design feature The fibers of the processed wood are trimmed before the main blades of the drill come into contact with them, which helps to obtain a hole with even edges and a smooth inner surface.

Often when working with wood and materials based on it, it becomes necessary to drill an even round hole. You can use a jigsaw or a milling cutter, but such a tool is not always at hand or it is simply inconvenient to do the work with them. A wood dancer can make the task easier.

What is a wood ballerina

Circular adjustable drill "ballerina" - a device that is designed for drilling round holes of large diameter. The tool has simple design. It is a shank with a transverse rod, on which movable carriages with cutters are fixed. The bar has markings, according to which you can set the required spread of the cutters relative to the center of the intended hole. A core drill is fixed in the middle of the shank. It serves as a centering element and a support for drilling.

In addition to designs with two cutting elements arranged symmetrically, there are ballerinas with one cutter or even three. In the latter case, they are located on the basis in the form of a disk with grooves.

Tool functionality

A high-quality ballerina is made of high-strength steel, which makes it possible to use the device in working with soft and hard woods.

This tool has an adjustable drilling diameter. This allows you to make holes of almost any diameter. The drilling range limitation depends on the size of the ballerina. Manufacturers produce fixtures with the following cutter spread limits:

• from 30 to 120 mm;
• from 40 to 200 mm;
• from 40 to 300 mm;
• from 40 to 400 mm.

The maximum drilling diameter is limited by the bar on which the cutters are attached. Minimum - shank thickness.

The ballerina drill can be used in any place where the use of a jigsaw or manual router will be uncomfortable. For example, it can be assembled and installed furniture, in the details of which it is necessary to drill a neat hole, given the limited space. Another example is an uneven (convex or concave) surface. It is unlikely that it will be possible to do everything evenly and accurately with a jigsaw or milling cutter. It will be difficult to control the tilt of the tool relative to the surface. The ballerina can easily cope with such a task.

Features of working with the tool

The principle of working with a circular drill is simple. A hole is drilled with a centering drill, and then cutters are included in the work. They gradually make a narrow groove, gradually cutting through the material in a circle to the full depth.

The materials used in working with the ballerina are varied: wood, fiberboard, chipboard, MDF, drywall, plastic. One thing in common - the thickness of the part should be no more than 15-20 millimeters. This parameter is limited by the length of the incisors. Usually the manufacturer indicates the maximum drilling depth on the package. When trying to drill through thicker material, problems with ragged edges can occur.

The use of a tool with a single cutter is characterized by runout. This is due to the lack of balance relative to the longitudinal axis of drilling. Especially the runout will be felt when cutting holes of large diameter. Cut holes with a drill at low or medium speeds. When working on drilling machine no such problems arise.

Also, a laminated or veneered surface can cause inconvenience during operation. After passing through the decorative layer, drilling proceeds without problems.

A feature of the circular drill can be considered the possibility of adjusting the diameter. The distance between the cutters can be set on a scale on the bar, or more precisely with a caliper. This is convenient if you need to make a hole without gaps for a pipe or a round part.

The spacing of the incisors relative to the center is adjusted separately. It is necessary to expose the cutting parts as accurately as possible. This will save you unnecessary effort during operation and extend the life of the tool.

How to choose the right one and what to look for

Choosing a quality circular drill is quite easy. The main thing is to know the main points that you should pay attention to in the first place, but also not to lose sight of the little things.

construction, very important point: a wood ballerina can be with one incisor or two or more. For frequent use, it is better to purchase an option with two or three cutting elements. It is easier to work with such devices and the quality of the processing performed will be at an acceptable level.

It will not be superfluous to be able to replace individual parts. Inexpensive circular drills may have a one-piece shank with a non-removable center drill and stem.

Metal, strength and ability to withstand workloads depend on its quality. quality tool made of high strength steel or alloys. The shape of the shank and holders of the cutters is machined. The bar is usually stamped and made of the same metal.

Cheaper options often use soft metal or alloys that can be brittle. Under load, parts can deform or break. Such a tool will not last long and it will also be difficult to achieve accuracy from it.

Workmanship, the main feature is the absence of backlash and distortion. All parts must be fitted to each other and securely fastened with fixing screws.

The marking of the bar of a high-quality ballerina is stamped. Sometimes divisions are highlighted with bright paint for better visibility.

Cutters, high-quality cutting elements are made of hardened tool steel. On the holders they are fixed with rivets or by soldering. Solid cutters with holders (made from the same metal) dull quickly and are not durable.

The manufacturer, when choosing any tool and consumables, preference should be given to well-known and long-established brands and brands. The most common are Topfix, Stayer, Irwin, Strum.

Purchasing an adjustable circular drill for household use, or if you need to drill a few holes, is completely justified. This eliminates the need to purchase an expensive tool that may only be needed a few times.