How do you organize your drills ?

1

12345678910

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Jul 13, 2009
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How do you organize your drills ?

How do you organize your drills ?

Not so much knifemaking as fabrication

I've got the standard individual index boxes for fractional, letter and number up to 1/2"

I've also got a few 17/32" around for 1/2" screw clearance screw holes.



The big problem is the larger drills

Some are reduced 1/2" shanks that I've turned
some long
Some short
some Morse taper 1, 2, 3

Whatever I've bought, inherited or whatever over the years.

all in baskets that I have to root through to find something


I don't use them too often, but I'd like them organized
I don't really want to line the walls with them.

It would be nice if it fit inside a filiing cabnet drawer or toolbox drawer


What do you do, let me steal your ideas



I'm thinking cheap DIY
 
12345678910 said:
I'm thinking cheap DIY
Click to expand...

I don't use nearly that many drills; I have it narrowed down to a dozen that I use all the time, including awls I use for leatherwork. I just took a block of wood and drilled blind holes in it with a bit one size larger than each one. They stand upright in the block, tip down. Easy to grab what I need, and much better for them than rattling around in a drawer, as long as I remember to clean them off before putting them back in the block.

Perhaps you could do something similar, with different blocks for different styles/uses.
 
I have 4 Rubber Made cabinets I bought say 12 years ago. Each has about 80 drawers. The small drill bits- and I have lots of them take up about40 of those drawers. The large bits are in cans wityh the tips up , and these are in a wooden box under a bench so I can get at them easily by just pulling the box out. Frank
 
I have a work bench in my shop that is a 4'x8' piece of 3/4" plywood and it sets on 4 dressers that I scrounged from garage sales. The dresser under my bench top drill press is for drill bits. One has hole saw type drills another indexes both fractional and a couple full sets with numerical and alphabetical. On has drills over 1/2". I took a block of wood and drilled a series of holes in it that hold 1/2" shanked drills and keep it full of drills from 17/32" to 1" by 32nds. I have a old bread pan filled with extra bits over 1/2", another with drills from 3/8" to 1/2" and smaller pans with bits from 1/4" to 3/8" and another with small drills. I keep a couple sets of decent drill indexes full. One I think of as my top set another as my number 2. If I break or dull a bit in one of those sets I replace it from spares or sharpen. Some bits that
I use a lot of like 1/8" I keep the spares in separate containers. I also keep the correct sized drill in with my taps. I have my taps in one of those small cabinets with the little drawers. Over the years of my metal craft career I have scrounged a lot of drills. Some places consider them consumables and don't want to bother making sure they are sharp and restocking them in the tool room. I have been given coffee cans full of old bits.
 
My numbered/lettered/fractional twist drill bits and brad point bits came with a metal container. For the loose numbered bits, I keep them in a little storage drawer bin with the corresponding taps. Because some of the taps take a range of bits depending on material, I use little baggies with the number Sharpied on. My extra long brad points stay in the vinyl sleeves they shipped with. I made a custom wood holder for my Forstner bits and spade bits to lie flat. For the Forstners, I drilled a hole with each bit, then cut the workpiece down the center to expose a semi-circular holder rack that sits down in the tool drawer. For loose fractional twist drills, Silver & Deming, and center finders, I have a couple of the flat plastic storage bins with removable dividers, so I can keep them semi-organized by size. My wood augers came from my Grandfather, so I made a wood box to protect the original cardboard they are still in.

One way I like to make DIY organizers is to rip some dividers about 1/2" square. I lay them where I want them on a thin plywood drawer/tray bottom, then drill a pilot hole down through the top of the divider, and out the bottom of the plywood. I drop a nail through one end to hold it in place, then drill the other end so it stays aligned. Then I put sheet metal screws up through the plywood and hold the divider from the bottom side. If you have a stack of dividers and a hand saw, you can cut the dividers to fit a fairly complex arrangement, and get them fastened, pretty quick. Let me know if you want some photos.
 
I put them in order by size on a magnetic strip that is mounted to the wall.

Above that strip is another with the bits I use a lot, my F, W, and P sizes. I have a couple of drill presses, the other has a strip with my kydex drill bits and chamfering bits.

I'm working on a system of trays (clear tackle boxes) for my tap setups and mill tooling. I'm using a row for each tap - first bit, tap, clearance bit. For my tooling I may set up box for folders with everything I need to make one. The lids keep chips out so I can have them right next to the mill.

My end mills go in a box with little slide out drawers, I am currently trying to label them all by type then size. I keep reamers and other tooling stored in a slide out tool box behind my mill... currently I lay everything out on a towel in the order of operations.
 
james terrio said:
I like that idea, but a magnet anywhere in my shop tends to get covered in fine steel dust within a day or two. :grumpy:
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It does but I just wipe them off with a shop towel before use. My grinding room in the shop looks like the dustbowl right now, I think my blaster needs it's own room! :D

I have a dust collector and if I had to do it over again I'd just buy a blower motor and run my dust outside. It helps a ton with the finer stuff...
 
I've got a complete letter/number/fractional to half inch index set, that I keep next to the mill. I've also got pieces of ABS or PVC that I've drilled out 1/2" holes in a grid for the rest of the 1/2" shank fractionals up to 1.5", that I keep out also. The rest of the thousands of bits in duplicates and odd sizes I've got, I keep in a drawer cabinet, in packages, rubber banded together.

I've got thousands of reamers, counterbores, end mills, etc.. Keeping them all "organized" seems impossible, even though I've got a bunch of dividable hillman drawer cabinets. I keep all the standard sizes semi organized, but especially with reamers, and end mills, where I've got a ton of odd-ball sizes and shapes, I just keep the misc stuff together, and pick through if I need it.

Would probably be nice to organize a DB of it all, but that ain't gonna happen. ;)


Edit: Thousands might be an exaggeration, but it's definitely in the high hundreds of any type. ;)
 
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When I had a house, I kept all of my drill bits in small containers made for holding drill bits, the larger stuff for the hammer drills, or specialty bits (mason, glass, etc) were kept in a wooden toolbox that I made in the cub scouts years ago, not horribly organized but very effective... affective... effective...
 
12345678910 said:
Sure I'd love to see photos
Click to expand...

Nothing like taking pictures to get things cleaned and organized. I found about three bits I forgot I had. The photo below shows the cutout rack I made for the Forstners, the long brad points, the spade bits, and my loose bits in a plastic organizer. You can see the spade bits get used as paint stirrers more than anything else.
2013-08-01+19.34.16.jpg



This one shows a top view of those dividers I was talking about. You can see the little drill holes on the top edge, then the last photo shows the sheet metal screws coming in from the bottom. I tried measuring where the dividers were on top, then drilling on the bottom, and it was taking for ever. Drilling down through the top of the divider, and pinning it in place, makes for really fast fabrication. I cut a couple of custom retainers for this drawer, but you can see what I standardized as a divider on the straight sections.
2013-08-01+19.35.11.jpg


2013-08-01+19.35.35.jpg
 
For the reduced shank drills I find the easiest way is to drill some 1/2" holes in a 2" x 4" and line them up smallest to largest.

For my knifemaking I only use a half dozen sizes and I have them laid out next to my drill press from smallest to largest.
 
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