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Drill Sharpeners

CatHead

Hot Rolled
Joined
May 9, 2004
Location
Amherst, Nova Scotia , Canada
We're interested in getting a sharpener for the shop, I originally wanted a Darex M5 but apparently they are discontinued...The company we deal with also carries one called "The Champ"...any comments?...I think someone recommended this brand to me before...
 
This topic has been covered before.
I will recommend "THE CHAMP" until the day I die.
It makes a beautiful split-point on any size drill.
 
I will recommend "THE CHAMP" until the day I die.
It makes a beautiful split-point on any size drill.
To put some perspective on your recommendation it would be helpful to know what else you have tried...have you used Oliver, Brierly, Rush, Black Diamond, or Sterling grinders for example ??

I recall The Champ came up in discussion here a few years ago and was trashed as a POS by a number of users, so I'm confused as to what to think of it myself. I do recall they went into some detail as to why it was a POS and it made sense to me at the time.
 
The one MSC sells, that slides the drill along the inside radius of a small cup wheel is the best I have ever used, you can drill a .4995 hole with a .500 drill sharped on one. They arent cheap but I have used them at 3 jobs and they sure are nice.
Hey thanks Willbird- I got one of those in a bunch of free stuff a couple years ago... never seen one before and kinda figured it was a ho-hum machine. I'll set it up now!
 
I have an older Darex, an M-3, which is very similar to the M-5, and a very old Black Diamond.

The Darex is not rigid enough to do precision sharpening. If you are careful, it will put a servicable point on your drill, but there is always risk the point is slightly off center. Has nothing to do with wear, just the way it is designed and built.

My Black Diamond is ancient and suffers from a lot of wear. Consequently, I get a lot of off-center points. It needs some repairs. The way it is designed and made gives it better rigidity than the Darex.

If both machines were new, the Black Diamond would be the easy winner.
 
I use both the Darex V290 and a Lisle 91000. I wouldn't want just one of them, as each has advantages.

The Darex V290 (which has been replaced with the V390) sharpens up to 3/4" FAST. Half a minute from dull to sharp, including splitting the point. Adjustable for whatever type drill you are sharpening. http://www.darex.com/main/content/view/26/55/

The Lisle 91000 sharpens up to 1 1/4". It takes a couple of minutes to set the machine for the size drill being sharpened. Actual sharpening takes around a minute. Does not split the point. Really good for changing a 118* to a 135* point. Excels at badly dulled or damaged bits. http://www.lislecorp.com/grinder_index.cfm

Both were eBay purchases, around $700 for the pair.
 
I think precisionworks hit it on the head. The bottom of the line Darex I have at work is a drill SHARPENER, NOT a drill GRINDER.

I didn't like the Darex at ALL when I first got hold of it. I was trying to salvage the trashed bits in the index and it wasn't working worth a crap.

If you have a bit that just has shiny edges, the Darex will touch it up in seconds. Break a bit or let some buffoon burn one up and the Darex is worthless. You'll be far better of grabbing a Starrett drill point gage and stepping over to the bench grinder to bring that bit back to life. Once you have the geometry within reason, the Darex will make short work of a razor sharp hone job.
 
The one mentioned that MSC sells is a SRD brand is very easy to use. Havn't tried to do a split point. Bought mine on ebay. 10 seconds to set drill in fixture and as little as another 30 to sharpen.
If the drill is in real bad shape it does take a long time, but I found doing a manual dressing on a belt sander prior saves me time if I have to cleanup a bad drill.
The wheels are not to expensive.
I used the Drill Dr and took it back

Any one who has a SRD pm me and I'll share a modification I made to the feed adjustment
 
Any feedback on the Drill Doctor stuff? Looking for a drill sharpener in the $2-300 (max) range.
Biting my tongue...... I have said it all before, summary, DD is a POS, of which a few do seem to work reliably for a while. Even DD seems not to know why.
 
Looking for a drill sharpener in the $2-300 (max) range.
You might luck out at an auction and get a nice benchtop Oliver 21 in that price range. But if thinking in terms of used dealer prices, you need to get up toward $800 and up, for anything decent really.

Here's an Oliver 21 that sold for 99 cents !!! on eBay, but of course the seller has $100 loading fee...which is insane considering one strong man can lift that little grinder by hand. But even $100.99 is still dirt cheap for one of those if it works and comes with both of the V block jaw sets needed to hold the full range of drills.
 
I've got a Lisle like Barry mentioned up above, and a Cawi-Spiral, which is guaranteed to be one of the funkiest machines you'd ever find, but which works fantastic once you learn how to use it and make all the adjustments its capable of. With either one, I find you're much better off to rough out a badly damaged drill on either a belt sander or a pedestal grinder if the drill is very big. If you do all the roughing on the drill grinder, then you end up needing to re-dress the wheel prior to the final grind. I grind most everything to 130* incl angle and split the point because that just seems to work best for me. One thing that's very important IMO for good life is to hone the cutting edge and get rid of the razor sharp portion. I've been drilling 57/64 holes in 1018 varying from 1.5" to 2.25" thick recently, and drill which chipped in less than 10 holes on the factory grind has now drilled over 300 holes on a grind as described above, and its done it at a substantially heavier feedrate than I started out with on the factory grind.
 
Any feedback on the Drill Doctor stuff?
I get so tired of hearing about that thing. Are HSM/newbie's obscessed with it because they do alot of advertising, the price, the cute name, or all of the above ?? :confused:
 
S. Leseman

I am quite sure you will like that drill grinder, they rock, and they are fast. sometimes the Vee blocks will get kind of worn. The newer ones have a larger accy cup wheel and a bigger vee block to do even larger drills.

For larger drills I have ised an Oliver, it is the cadillac of drill grinders, but a black diamond isnt bad either.

The ones that seem to fall on their face is any system with cams and such...most of these have an adjustment to get the lip heights equal, thus getting the point on center, it is ALWAYS out of adjustment to some degree...nothing is ever perfect.

The best systems seem to me to be the ones that re-fixture the drill somehow to grind the second side of the point, and use a damn good fixture to hold it in the first place, thus the point comes out in the middle.

The real acid test with any system to compare it is to grind a single drill with it and check the hole size you get, the better the system the smaller your hole will be. People learn to live with a hole .005 bigger than the drill, and a lot of horse puckey to even achieve that...I don't have time for that baloney hehe. I never did jobs that really needed split points and stuff like that so I mostly dealt with a good old 118 point with a hand thinned web where needed.

Bill
 
I get so tired of hearing about that thing. Are HSM/newbie's obscessed with it because they do alot of advertising, the price, the cute name, or all of the above ??
Obsessed? Hawgwarsh......

But the DD is the only reasonably available game in town between $20 "General" sharpeners and $500 - $2500 for a functioning reliable machine. There may be other peripheral players, but they are invisible.

And, just enough of the DDs work well enough to keep the "urban legend" going.

"Features" sell products to people who have no other reference frame...... the DD has "features" although they don't work well.
 
For larger drills I have ised an Oliver, it is the cadillac of drill grinders, but a black diamond isnt bad either.
You should state that you mean an Oliver 510 or 600 model so as not to confuse that with with the smaller Oliver 21.

I would agree that the Oliver 600 is fairly "Cadillacish" for drills larger than about 1/2 inches in a normal shop environment. But for higher volume needs there are better drill grinders than the 600, such as the Giddings & Lewis HC and HR models.
 








 
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