Six Most-Useful Fractional Drill Bits?

[Chips O'Toole]

I've been buying all sorts of little things for the shop. I felt like I was making life harder than it had to be by waiting until I needed things.

Lately, I've picked up a box full of assorted squeeze hose clamps, a giant assortment of blade fuses, metric and imperial O-rings, glass fuses, magnetic hooks with a 22-pound pull, rare earth bar magnets to hold a tool chest drawer lid up, 30 color-coded keychains, two spring-loaded punches (can't believe I was stupid enough to do it the old way), a new label maker, label tapes in 6 colors, more alligator clip leads, a skinny-jaw crescent wrench (fantastic), SPRAY CAN STRAWS (obvious), 6 funnels, an assortment of 2-stroke hose and filters, and a really great bidet toilet seat.

Okay, that last one wasn't for the shop.

I also bought...let's see...about 7 miniature pliers and cutters. Perhaps this was overkill.

Harbor Freight now sells a three-piece Doyle precision set for something like $12, and it's very good. You get needle nose pliers shorter pliers, and side cutters. I also bought three pairs of Engineer pliers. These are Japanese, made by the company that makes Vampliers. Same thing, cheaper. Engineer pliers are amazing. The quality is way better than American pliers, and the ones they make for gripping bad fasteners really work. Much better than Vise Grips.

I picked up a pair of small Pro America needle nose pliers, used, just to see what they were like. This is a company that has generally sold to the government, so most people aren't familiar with them. They look like great pliers.

I'm now thinking I may get a boxed assortment of heat-shrink tubing, plus some drill bits.

I already have some indexes. I have learned what a pain it is to get new individual bits after I break or lose them. I have made the mistake of grabbing small numbered bits at random and then losing them. Seems to me the smart thing is to pick maybe 6 sizes of common fractional bits, buy a dozen of each, and use these sizes unless I actually need a different size. I would only do this for bits in sizes 1/2" and smaller. I don't need 40 pounds of Silver & Deming bits.

So here's a question: what sizes would you get? I feel like 1/8", 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2" would cover a lot of territory in general shop work.

I've seen people with big boxes with lots of drawers that can hold a bunch of every conceivable size. Until I started looking for individual bits, I never understood why anyone would want a box like that.

 

[mmcmdl]

Tap drills and a fractional set .

 

[Chips O'Toole]

Regarding big boxes (dispensers), I see people give bad reviews to Huot. The drawers have no slides, and people say the boxes are made poorly. Chinese VEVOR boxes are somewhat cheaper and seem to be better.

I have small Huot indexes, and they seem very tough.

 

[RJSakowski]

If I only had to pick six, it would br your four choices plus 3/16" and 5/16". Ideally, a 119 pc. set of numbered letter and fractional, Replace as needed. If you find the there are ones that you use more frequently, then buy a stock of those sizes. Minimally, a 29 pc. fractional set, 1/16" - 1/2". In a pinch, fractional drills can be used for common thread ta drills. For years before I got number and letter drills, I used the fractional sizes given on my Hanson threading chart.

 

[hman]

In a pinch, I'd pick-and-choose what was needed to get a pretty complete "tap drill" set, both Metric and Imperial.

 

[Chips O'Toole]

Getting a big index wouldn't help, because the point is to have multiple copies of drills I break or lose a lot. I have indexes, and when I break a bit, I have to go online and try to find a replacement, which is expensive and difficult. If I try to stick with a few sizes most of the time, and I keep a dozen of each on hand, I will spend less time online trying to find a 35 or a 41.

 

[Firstram]

Buy a 119 pc set and buy 6 replacements for each size you use the most!

 

[markba633csi]

Pretty hard to break bits smaller than 3/16"- maybe just buy extras of that size and below. If you are breaking larger ones
I'm curious as to how you are doing it
Anyhow, I'm a fan of the full set- numbers, letters, fractional. I pretty much use most of them at some point. Letters least.
It's good to have them all available
-M

 

[Jake M]

The six most used drill bits is easy. It's what's left in the index when there's one hundred and thirteen drills missing or broken.

Pilot drills and special applications aside, 1/8, 3/16. 1/4, 5/16. 3/8, 7/16, and 1/2 if I'm working at home. Roll pins, pop rivets, and bolt sizes make up most of my holes, those are the ones I break, loose, or use up. At work, It'd be 1/32 above nominal for bolt sizes, 1/4 through 5/8, folllowed closely by their heli-coil tap drill sizes. Honestly though, I'm better served to keep the 119 piece index as primary, and when one is missing, I replace it with a box, bag, sleeve, or whatever I can get my hands on, so the index is full, there's two to 11 spares, depending on how often I think it'll need replacing. Spares go in a sharpie labeled ziploc freezer bag, even if they're in a good package, and that all goes into a walmart dish tray on the shelf. No lost labels that way, no cap fell of the cardboard tube, ya know.... And I can see it from across the room. As I'm sure you know, some drill packages are better marked than others if you have to sort that out. Although I have never had enough spare drills to give a second thought to getting a dispenser, I have given a thought to the index. I've worked out of a 119 piece set for 30 years, at work, and had one at home for 20. My radar is out to split that up into fractions, numbers, and letters.

Separate subject on the drills- Getting replacement drills is easy. Stocking the "correct" type of drill for every application is impossible. Therefore, I get basic "mid grade" HSS drill bits (any brand or source that I come across) for nearly everything. I had a rash of reasons to drill into stainless with a half inch hole, that needed a mechanic's length drill to fit, so that hole is filled with some magic coated drill that's a little short. The heli-coil dril for 3/8-16 is made out of some kind of kryptonite (M2? maybe?) that costs a fortune, but it gets me through a bunch of repairs in some very hard "mystery steel" on some of the spreading equipment. So I gave up on symetry, and it becomes an eclectic mix of things, just so long as the "special" drill won't be damaged unduely by general work. Very effective way to keep the "special drills" drawer managable, so I'm not re-buying stuff, or overstocking on specialty items.


Heat shrink assortments? Whatcha doing with that, and how much do you use? Does the salt air make it to where you are? If it does, dual wall rocks, and I haven't seen it in assortments, except the "way too inexpensive" kind where the tube melts before the "glue" flows.... Rolls are pretty inexpensive.

On the pliers subject.... I see you're on a roll.... Does that include "angled" needle nose and "angled" side cutters? If not, it should. They just fix so many problems.

 

[Chips O'Toole]

Last pliers I ordered were soft-jawed eyeglass repair pliers.