Thread: drilling long hole

Gid'ay hagansrd
Thats one hell of a hole, to use a lathe you would need a steady and some expensive extenions to a boring bar
Possibly a trip to a good machine shop who have a horizontal borer
But otherwise If the problem can be solved easily then you have posted on the right Forum

Rgds
Russell

What are you making?
There may be alternative ways to do it without using a huge drill.

Originally Posted by hagansrd

Gday everyone, im looking for a way to drill a hole, up to 1m long and around 2" round....sorry for mixing my measurements, in the end grain. i was thinking about a lathe, but im not sure whats the best way to go about this? its a big hole!!

A question ...
does the hole have to be round?
If not, the easiest way is probably to saw the member in half longitudionally, rout a 2"x1" (width x depth) slot in both halves and then glue the pieces back together. If the ends of the hole must be round, when you rout the slot stop short of each end and use a 2" forstner bit to cut the ends in after you've glued the stick back together.
If the hole must be round along its length, you'll need to use a 2" cove bit in your router.

Ian

Hmmm, I'm imagining some fun with a serious laser !!!

You making a didgeridoo? How did the aborigines do it?

They started with a hollow limb.

Hi Hagansrd,

Do a Google on boat building and boring of stern tubes. These holes can be several inches in diameter and a couple of metres (yards!) long - mostly done with a boring bar, and accurate to within small fractions of an inch

I think termites did most of the work for the Aboriginies... They stood the pieces on stands so they had no direct contact with ground...

Wouldn't recommend you try using them for any modern projects though. Stupid little bastards can't even eat out well fitting dovetails. Believe me, I've tried.

I guess I'll just have to stick with progress...

Damien

Originally Posted by zenwood

You making a didgeridoo? How did the aborigines do it?

They roasted the outside of the limb on a fire so the sap/moisture went to the inside of the limb.
The limb was then sat on a termites nest so the termites could eat out the moist timber.

Al

1m holes long are nothing new on a lathe, even a 6' lamp stand is generally done in two 3' lengths. The difference is the diameter... and I've seen a bloke make wooden pipes around this size.

He used a small boring bar to drill a pilot in a length of raw stock. After boring, he eyeballed the bore to check for drift. If 'tis too curved, 'tis useless. Once he had a bore he was happy with he remounted it between centres, centring on the bore, then roughed the outside while turning outside spigots on both ends. Next he remounted it with a chuck on one end and a mandrel mounted to a faceplate with a "cage" (sorta like a jam chuck with access holes cut in the sides) in the tailstock. The cage held the end securely but allowed for waste removal and changing bits on the boring bar. After all, you simply can't fit a 1" forstner bit through a tailstock.

He used several modified forstner bits, each only enlarging the hole by about 1/2" at a time. He'd modified the central "spike" so that it fitted snugly into the previous bore, instead of into end-grain like a normal forstner... I think he used lengths of pipe tacked on but he was pretty secretive about it (wouldn't let me examine one ) so I can't be sure but that's what it looked like; I've no idea how he welded/glued/fitted the pipe to the bit.

After boring out, then he turned the outside down to final size.

I'm pretty confident I could replicate his method though, given the need... but I'd much rather just find his phone number.

thanks Ashore, your rite..plenty of good ideas so far

How about coopering it? Not sure if this is suitable for your project, but you could make it as long as you like. Do a search on these forums for a spreadsheet that calculates the sizes and angles you need. Think its in the 'best of...' forum.

thanks Ian, ive seen this process before and it works great but im trying to find a way to do the job without cutting the log in half.

lazer sounds very exiting...but i imagine i would probably kill someone..me, others, but im sure the project