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Sharpening drill bits

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John Rudd:
A subject that has probably been discussed at great length before on here and other forums...

I decide it was time to sort something a little more permanent in terms of sharpening my own....Yes I was taught how to off hand grind up a drill bit, I wanted another approach that would give repeatable results and remove the guesswork.

Enter the Sealey SMS2008........
I got mine from a well known auction site for less than £60 inc delivery......after trying it out on some 'scrap' drill bits, time to get the good ones out and touch them up....

I now have a set of drills already to do some work.....

sparky961:
How does this unit compare to the infamous "Drill Doctor"?

A while back I was strongly considering a DDX750 (the higher end model).  Though after reading about a lot of people saying there was a particular art to using the machine, I just improved my off-hand skills and learned to use a drill point gauge.  I've become quite good at hand sharpening drills in the range of about 0.250 and larger.  But alas, good is relative and I sometimes see one flute cutting more than the other and that sort of thing.  That, and the smaller ones are more difficult to sharpen well.  So I'd still consider an inexpensive unit that actually works well.  There's an amazing difference in the kind of work you can do with properly sharpened drill bits.

John Rudd:

--- Quote from: sparky961 on July 16, 2015, 04:16:17 PM ---How does this unit compare to the infamous "Drill Doctor"?


--- End quote ---

I've no idea.....never used a drill doctor......

But the Sealey unit I've bought works well....So far I've sharpened a fair few HSS drills of varying sizes- 3 to 13mm.....without issue... :dremel:
I'm quite happy with the unit....

appletree:
Bought a drill doctor a couple of years back more for my son to use than anything else (never even powered up, after 40 years of sharpening by hand I still do just that. Its sub 3mm that are difficult but then  a box of those are not expensive 

Lew_Merrick_PE:
I too have heard the horror stories about the Drill Doctor.  That said, I did some minor tool design work for them (Darex) about a decade ago and was paid with their (then) top of the line unit.  No, it is nowhere near as accurate a unit is my (model year 1963) Balanz unit.  But, it does do a respectable job sharpening bits from ø.090 (inch) to ø.625 (inch).  I often take it with me when visiting companies where I will be expected to use their (rarely sharp) drill bits.  I even use it to save time in my own shop where I only have a couple of drills that need a touch up as it takes me most of an hour to pull out and set-up my Balanz unit.  [My shop fits really nicely into 2500 ft² and it is currently crammed into 850 ft².]

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