Drilling Small Holes - Jewelry/Ornaments Drill Press?

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FordTrax

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I am playing around making some mini-ornaments and pendents on my Jet 1014. Putting holes in has been a challenge. I was wondering if a small bench top drill press and a x/y vice/jig would make holding the piece easier. Then I could put a jewelers pin vice/drill in the standard chuck for small bits and drill accurate holes. This is not helped by my 50 year old eyes - dang I can't see close up any more.

There are tons of small bench top drill presses on CL everyday just wondering if I could denicate one for this fine drilling. Or would there be to much play - I am drilling only about 1/4"-5/16" deep?

Any other suggestions to make this easy?
 
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I find that when drilling wood, fine bits can be influenced by the wood grain. So I often need to adjust the location as the bit starts. I just don't think a rigid x-y table would be a great benefit. I use lots of light, and magnifiers to center holes in the earrings I make.
 
Whenever I need to drill holes using bits smaller than a 1/16" I use my hand held VS drill motor. The chuck can hold the smallest of bits. I put a piece of blue masking tape on the bit as a depth guide. I also always start the hole with a sharp awl. Heavy grain wood the bit will wander no matter what you do. Unavoidable. Be ware. When screwing in hooks, screws or whatever always use some sort of lubricant. I like to use ordinary bar soap. Just some on the threads helps them thread better. Those tiny threads are fragile. Been doing it for many years and works for me.
 
Clockman

Sorry to have to ask but what is a VS Drill motor? Is that like a dremel or something special for your clocks?
 
No that is a variable speed hand held drill. What this does is allows me to control the speed of the bit with the press of a trigger. With a dremel or fixed motor you set the speed and that is it. I happen to own a bunch of older Makita 9.6 volt drills. These are easy on the weight balance in my hand and light to use. There are many newer drills on the market today that are also light weight. Just need to make sure the collet on the chuck goes down to zero in order to grip those tiny bits. What this does is allows you to hold the object with one hand and drill with the other. Keeping the bit straight is not hard to do.


http://www.toolstop.co.uk/component.../product/dcf5d451719bef78dad0662f4e7b74e0.jpg


Putting holes in ornaments for screw hooks can be done right on the lathe. You have the ornament mounted somehow. Just drill the top with a bit in a jacobs chuck mounted in the tailstock. I do not make pendants but something similar probably is possible.
 
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A take off on John's lathe suggestion would be to put your drill chuck/bit in the headstock and just hold the piece to be drilled by hand. You are not drilling very deep so this should work.
You can either rest the piece to be drilled or your hand on the tool rest to steady it.
 
I drill ornaments on the lathe with a hand held pin vise and numbered bits.

A tiny divot with a skew, point tool, small center bit, vortex tool etc gets the hole started.

Use slow speeds.
 
For small holes I sometimes use small end mills with a 1/8" shaft. Much easier to center with little to no flex. Available on eBay and other sources.
 
I frequently drill breather holes in pens using a #65 drill bit held in a pin vise. i find that drilling slowly by hand with the pin vise helps control the hole, and since a #65 bit is pretty small, it's really not hard to do.

I bought a sleeve of 10 **** from Amazon because I expected that I would probably break a few, so I wasn't disappointed the first time that a bit snapped. But that led to an interesting discovery - I chucked up the short end of the broken bit in my pin vise, and find that with only 3/8" or so of bit extending out of the end of the pin vise, drilling is far more precise, and because there is less bit to flex, I can drill more aggressively without worrying about breaking a bit.
 
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