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TIP - Homemade Drill Guide

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Jman

Site Developer
Joined
Oct 22, 2002
Messages
1,881
Location
Pacific NW, USA!
Cliff Dawson, a fellow Pietenpol builder, kindly has allowed me to post some of the tips he has on his website. Here is how he made his homemade drill guide. You can visit his site at: http://clifdawson.ca
Have you ever tried to drill a hole through a wide board and have it come out the other side exactly were it is supposed to? And just how successful were you? This thing is a drill guide that lines up the exit point using a pin, with the entry point of the drill bit. The two shown at the right are 1/8" and 3/16" tools.
In the left picture you see the pin on the left, then the body, made from soldered copper water pipe. The long drill bit is on top. There are many ways of making this tool.
I found 12" long stainless steel tubing in my local hobbyshop. This I ran through the copper from one end of the tool to the other with a little bit sticking out both ends.
Then I worked up some epoxy putty, the kind that comes in sticks as shown in the right picture at the bottom. This was then stuffed into the copper pipe around the stainless tubing and allowed to set. The next order of business was to determine the width the plank to be drilled and cut out a section of the tubing accordingly. Now the drill bit will be guided absolutely straight to the exact point it has to hit on the other side of the plank. No guesswork involved.
 

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