Eureka

It doesn’t happen a lot, but that’s probably why it’s so special. That moment when an idea jumps into your head and is so obvious that it’s like you knew it all along, often accompanied by the thought “how did I miss that?”. I had one of those recently working on my drill bit grinding fixture and process. The method I’ve shown in recent posts is what I would call “freehand”. Even though the bit is fixed at an angle to the wheel, it’s still up to the operator to grind it consistently and to get the cutting edges even. In the video below, I show how to evaluate and alter the bit if necessary if it drills too slowly or too fast. I had entertained ideas about ways to make the grinding more guided, but they kept hitting a road block.

I had thought the process would benefit from having something like a locking ring around the shank of the drill bit that could ride against as stop to fix the relationship of the bit to the wheel. But my brain was stuck on the kind of rings often used as depth stops and I didn’t want to have to have a separate ring for each size of bit. Then, as you will see in the video, it dawned on me that my shop is full of adjustable locking rings called drill chucks! So, with the help of a simple screw and a $12 chuck, my bit sharpening became nearly fully guided, precise and micro adjustable.