Haha if he swings that hammer all day he could probably handle half the nerds on this site. Id say he has manly skills.

It’s really difficult for a normal person to get a (small) piece of railroad track here in Europe, (we have demented scrappers to thank for that) even when it makes a nice small anvil…

I think he has been gathering serious followers, I’m seeing some new tools. Maybe apprenticeship or mentor has been helping him. Either way the dedication of posting the works and DIY are some of the finest explanations that you will NOT find from any of the old bitter or creepy weirdos that work at hardware stores.

The anvil should be 20 times heavier then the heaviest hammer used on it. An 140kg anvil is already bounces when I use my 10kg sledge hammer on it.

The set is housed in a high-quality case which, despite being slightly tricky to prise some of the bits out of, is clearly labelled and sensibly laid out. The metal drill bits are HSS, the wood bits have sharp brad points, and the spade bits are titanium coated and have a square shaft to reduce slippage in the chuck.

The carbon steel shaft and tungsten carbide tip offers the sharpness and abrasion to cut through tougher materials. According to reviewers, the ease with which these Wickes items cut is impressive, especially given the price of these specialist bits.

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it is by far not that difficult to forge HHS steel or other toolsteel. Compared to other steels the temperature range for forging is just smaller.

Smaller diameter drill bits tend to be easy to break, so it’s a helpful touch that Draper has doubled up on the 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5mm bits. And the inclusion of a 3.2mm bit, in addition to the 3.0 and 3.5mm bits, is helpful too.

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But he doesn’t stop there: he also shows us his method of making handles for knives out of hardwood — its a pretty cool process and the finished knives are beautiful. The video below is a bit long, but well worth the watch if you’re interested in trying your own hand at forging.

We’re looking at the more commonly-used drill bits here and, to make the choice easier, we’ve broken them down into the type of materials they’re designed to drill through. Plus we’ve thrown in our top drill bit set that covers all the main options. We’ve looked at online reviews and ratings from a range of retailers to deliver our verdict.

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Most of the drill bits you’re likely to encounter will bear the abbreviation HSS, for high speed steel. It’s a steel, alloyed with a range of other metals, designed to withstand the extreme temperatures generated by drilling through harder materials at high speed, hence the name. But, despite the high breaking strength they exhibit, they’re also brittle and don’t offer much resistance to bending. Which means it’s easy to snap thinner bits with even the most innocuous of impacts.

Very cool blowtorch forge. I wonder if you could build an anvil yourself. They always come in the form of a monstrous slab of metal, but the only working part seems to be the striking surface. Maybe you could get by with some plate steel and a sturdy base?

I guess it really cool to see “kids” reaching toward their own goals and projects without parents or retarded neighbors trying to force them to be conform or be copies.

Cobalt drill bits are much harder at higher temperatures making them good for drilling through stainless steel and other hard materials, though they are usually way in excess of what most DIYers need.

I disagree, you can built an anvil, or at least a replacement. Anvils come at 12 Euros per kilo (approx. $7/lb), used starting from about a third. You can buy a steel rod 150mm diameter for less, this will often word as an anvil. Or you get a shorter rod (say 100mm long) and weld a tube to it. This tube you fill with lead (or concrete and steel scrap). But, as meep meep remarked: it must be solid.

On the farm I worked at for a while, we had a three-foot section of a large I-beam we used as an anvil for various purposes. It was scrap from a bridge construction, about a foot tall and eight inches wide, and about an inch thick at it’s thinnest point. It worked fine for hammer-forging.

For a start, drill bits are made from a number of different materials. And then the shape of the cutting face can be radically different depending on the material it’s designed to drill through. When you factor in price, the range of sizes available within a set, and the brand, the choice can be bewildering.

The beauty of this hack is aside from the tools you’ll need, it’s practically free to do. Worn out drill bit or other steel tool? No problem – heat it up and make something new. At the heart of this build is making your own forge. There’s lot of options, from using firebricks, to making a soup can forge like he did. From there, it’s really just a matter of annealing the steel (heating it up to red hot, and letting it cool down slowly in sand), and then heating it up again and forming it with a hammer and anvil.

I’ve seen a 1′ section of railroad track nailed with railroad spikes to a large wooden stump. Seemed like a pretty clever way to make an anvil. Judging by googling “railroad track anvil,” it looks like a pretty widely used method, where you can get creative and grind down one side to a point. Looks like you could buy some sections of railroad rails on ebay, or save yourself the work (read: fun) and buy a harbor freight anvil.

One of our tipsters sent in a great video showing how to make knives out of old broken drill bits. It comes from [The Art of Weapons] YouTube channel which is run by a 15 year old from the UK. He’s applying old techniques to modern technology and it’s awesome to see someone young with these skills.

I guess the main point is to talk to the ones children and don’t let neighbors talk shit about them. Like. “Oh a DIY lathe/mill? What RPM will is spin at? How hot can the bits get? What is the plan in the event of a cat failure?” “Oh a forge? how hot? what are the emergency shutdown steps?”

[The Art of Weapons] I remembered watched him start off with melting Al cans can make a slingshot from a Styrofoam mold.

Key specs – Number of bits: 50; Material: titanium nitride-coated, carbide-tipped; Sizes: 1.5-6.5mm (metal), 4-10mm (masonry), 4-10mm (wood); Case type: plastic carry case

It’s easy to spend plenty of time researching for your next drill, but it’s just as important to find the very best drill bits for your project. That’s because when it comes to drill bits, all things are most certainly not equal.

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Value is the name of the game with this set from Bosch, at just a touch over £1 per drill bit. If there’s a letdown, it’s that there’s no 9mm bit in the set, but all the other main sizes are covered so it barely harmed the near-perfect score among Amazon customers. Each bit has a sharp brad point for improved accuracy, and the shoulder-cutters on the leading edge of the grooves are designed to reduce tear out.

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The bits are stored in a fairly tough plastic case, which can also function as a stand to make selecting the correct bit easier. Each bit is clearly labelled in the case too. The round shanks are suitable for use in the majority of drills with a three-jaw chuck.

If you are willing to buy steel, try 1.2419, 1.2519, 1.2516 or 1.2562, all tungsten alloy steels. These steels make a real difference when comparing to C70 or 1.2008, the more plain carbon steels.

If you’re drilling a hole for a screw in wood, you will need a drill bit that’s slightly smaller than the screw you’re planning to use so that the screw’s thread will tap into the material. If you’re drilling a hole more than 10mm in diameter, you may be better off with a completely different, more specialist type of drill bit, like a Forstner bit, a spade drill bit, or, for much better holes, a hole saw.

Personally I don’t like the HSS due to it’s large carbides caused by the alloying elements. Try using files (not RASPS). They are often made of 1.2008, expecially if you go for the high quality brands. You can forge them into damascene, if you like to use them as mono or laminated. I found these to give the much better blade, better to sharpen, keeping the edge longer.

Toughness is paramount when drilling into metal because the heat generated can easily spell the end for cheap drill bits. Not so here, as this set from Draper sees the HSS straight shank bits coated with long-testing and tough titanium nitride. They’re likely to last longer, and they will not get lost as they come in a soft-grip plastic case which is clearly labelled, making finding bits and returning them to their correct slot a simple task. It’s also finished in Draper’s trademark blue, making it easier to spot at the bottom of a tool bag.

But it’s definitely worth spending the time and doing your homework because there’s nothing more frustrating than not having the correct size or type of drill bit to hand when you need it, or to find the bits disintegrating right in the middle of a delicate job.

Growing up I got in trouble because I was using a hammer to crush pebbles and nail wood together and the creep next door didn’t like that and told my folks. I was banned from using the household tools.

Just compared to what I have done at that age or looking at the kids I know. Even if they cloned projects, it’s great to see them using their time for something this productive.

Rail road track works pretty decently. But in general, you want your anvil to have mass. a 140-160lb anvil will do about anything you ever need to do. You want an anvil with good sharp face edges . An anvil should, next to a scribe, be the hardest tool you own. The body can be relatively soft steel, but ideally, you should have about a 1/2″ of hardened plate forge welded to the top. I don’t know of any company that makes these anymore, they’re all cast now. I had to check the Oracle of the internet, and found references of anvil faces needing to be around HRC 58-65. You don’t want your anvil to deform, you want what you’re hammering on to conform to the anvil face. The harder your anvil (within reason) the more that will happen. So, if you are able to forge weld plate to a big chunk of whatever. Then go for it. :) I use rail road track myself. But then I never do any large work.

Generally speaking, DIYers will end up buying a drill bit set, rather than a single bit – although there are exceptions, particularly for specialty jobs such as when a masonry drill bit is required – so that will already have a few of the main sizes covered.

And carbide – usually tungsten carbide – is a similarly tough material, and is commonly used in the manufacture of masonry drill bits.

When you think of a drill bit, most likely, a standard twist bit will spring to mind. These are suited to drilling metal or plastic. They have a sharp tip and the twisted grooves along the length to allow material to be drawn out of the hole to help keep the bit straight.

You’ve usually only got one chance when drilling into glass or tiles – with the time cost and monetary expense of replacing breakages, precision matters. Many glass and tile drill bits just look like regular twist drill bits, but this trio from Wickes are spade, or spear, shaped. While spear-tipped bits are generally more prone to breakage than twist bits, that can often be preferable to breaking a tile.

Just watch YouTube and they’re good to go. Kids have won science fairs and gotten nationwide press coverage for merely cloning stuff off YouTube (like that Braille printer kid)

Sure it worked fine for a machine or tool repair. Now let’s see how tired you get and how well you shape something after 8-9 hours, wasting about 20% of you energy on moving the “anvil” or correcting how much you put into the workpiece because it’s not predictable. A proper anvil also is a tool holder and a die for making holes

The odd breakage aside, the Bosch 50-piece X-Line set could be the only box of drill bits you will ever need. It covers the majority of common sizes you would need for drilling wood, metal, and masonry, plus it includes screwdriver bits (and an extension bar), a countersink bit, three sockets, two spade bits, and a gauge to check the size of the bits. It even comes with a snap-off knife.

Sorry City Hall had approved this project 6 months ago to install a new cellphone tower on your yard. You could have come to Hall Of Records basement to file a formal complaint 5 1/2 month ago.

Wood drill bits are usually the easiest to spot in your set because they often have a very sharp pointed tip on the end – a brad point – which allows the bit to grip the wood, without moving around, to start the hole. They have a sharp double-bladed thread which allows the drill to work its way through the wood quickly.

Parents in our days were more worried we’d poke out our eye with a fork. Now we aa parents prefer a eye patch kid verse one abused by schoolmates or other adults. As long as they aren’t trying to synth some hypertoxic chem or set a fire we are happy to let them do what make them happy.