Thread: Optimal sharpening for eggbeater driven twist drill bits?

After a bit of reading around I found a reference that may help. It is called the "Tools and Manufacturing Engineers Handbook Knowledge Base" Copyright 1998 from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and contains more info on drill bits than I have seen in one place in a long time.

The link will take you to a Google book. It is very slow to load and scan unfortunately.

As for what can be done regarding high speed bits, try putting some wax on the bit to help it clear the chips. Centering the point when sharpening is a real bear on small bits and a lot of people don't bother sharpening them because of it, they simply get new ones. If you use an awl to start the hole then the centering is not as big an issue, therefore sharpening is possible.

Hope it helps.

Derek,
as a semi-serious suggestion, try to hunt down a second-hand Eclipse #39 drill sharpener from the 1970s. It sharpens twist drills from 3mm to 13mm using a sheet of sandpaper and no electricity (seeing you are a hand-plane enthusiast).
I bought one secondhand for $10 and it works fine (as the wheels on the side are still round and have no flat areas). The instructions on how to use it can be found on Google Groups.
Cheers
Paul