Im a boring man, a screwing machine

We currently have 3 drilling machines, one battery powered handheld, a tabletop Drill Press and a handheld with hammering. It is well worth the effort to get all three types and to use the one that best fits the task at hand. Trying to fit a drill press into a hull is just as inefficient as using a handheld machine to drill 24mm (1") holes into 12mm (1/2") stainless steel. Try to use the drill press whenever possible, you will never be able to reach the same degree of accuracy manually. Drilling the frames before erecting them saves us the labor of drilling around 400 holes by hand!

Drilling metals is very different from other materials, speed is dramatically reduced and load must be much higher. Heat must be reduced by means of cutting oil* or a coolant system, this is especially true for stainless steel and other high-strength alloys. Those used to woodworking will have to show restraint when working with metals, start with lower rpm settings and if you feel up to it work your way up (2-300rpm is a good start for drills under 24mm (1")). Soft metals like aluminium, copper/brass/bronze and lead can be drilled much faster and without worry of overheating the drillbit. When drilling holes in metal one should aim for a continous spiral shaped shavings, these indicate proper speed and pressure resulting in better holes and greatly improved life of your drillbits. It is almost impossible to achieve this with a hand operated drilling machine because the pressure required is more than ones bodyweight.

Metal requires high quality drill bits, in recent years these became so affordable that people started buying HSS "metal" drillbits for woodworking because proper wood drills cost up to 10 times more. The manufactures quickly cought on and the quality of the bits came down to a point where HSS no longer means that a drillbit is capable of drilling metal. What is even worse is that these drillbits are nowhere as good at drilling wood as spade/spiral woodworking drills. Drillbits come in many types, Cobalt, HSS, HSS-S, TiN (titanium/titan), lenghts, sizes and shapes. Each type excells under particular circumstances depending on materials, thickness and the accuracy. Cobalt bits are stronger and harder than HSS bits, these are ideal for stainless steel, alloys, cast iron and materials with over 200 brinell**. As for coated drills there are several types TiC= Titanium Carbide Coated, TiN=Titanium Nitride Coated, and TiCN=titanium carbonitride, there are also some exotic coatings like diamond and aluminium oxide. The most common are TiN, many people call these "Titanium Drills" but this is a huge misunderstanding, these are TiN coated HSS drills. The advantage of the TiN coating is prolonged lifespan before the drillbit needs to be sharpened, although the added abrasion resistacce of TiN is great for everyday use is has limitations. TiN drillbits do not fair well when drilling hard materials and often the sharpening will strip the coating off leaving you with a standard HSS drillbit. Avoid using TiN drillbits when drilling stainless or other alloyed steels as these will ruin the TiN coating.

For larger projects and where tolerances are very small there is an alternative to regular drills, these are indexable drills. The cutting edge of these drills can be replaced since it an insert which is screwed fast, these are more common when using milling machines or lathes.

*Even if cutting oil is not available any grease/oil helps, stay away from teflon/carbon based lubricants. We have found it very handy to keep the oil in a container from a contact lense cleaning kit as can be seen on the picture.

**Brinell is a scale by which the surface hardness of metals is usually measured. mild steel is around 100 brinell while cast iron is often close to 300