Thread: Angled drill adaptor needed

Originally Posted by jack620

Dean,
I'm trying to picture how you are accessing the rafters to drill the holes. Have you removed the soffit lining and are working from underneath?

I did exactly what you are doing to an old house that was also made from incredibly hard wood. I removed the old soffit lining and the rotten fascia board. That gave me good access to the ends of the rafters. Then I fitted brackets and new fascia. A string line keeps it all nice and straight.

The timber on my house was so hard it would clog the drill bit on every hole. I had to pick out the glazed wood from the flutes with a pick almost every time. These Smart Bit replacement bits have a special shallow flute angle which doesn't clog nearly as badly as a standard twist drill bit:
Smart Bit | Replacement Bits | Packet of 5

Chris

I am removing the iron and accessing from the top. Picture the rafter sitting on the top wall plate and extending out past the wall to the edge of the eave. The eave beam then goes from there back to the wall about 250mm below the top of the wall plate. The brackets I made for the verandah started at about 300mm long from the facia back face and angled up the rafter because this id the only timber there that is structurally attached to the house proper. The eave beams (my term) just nail into the wall stud. I just had a look for a picture I had to show framing names and found it showed a frame the same as mine. Here it is.

House Frame terms.jpg

There are a lot of soffit bearers in the way and I would prefer to get the fastenings attached lower down where possible. I believe the roof angle is greater in this picture. Mine is 22deg so the rafters get in the way more.

This is not the only use I have for this tool. Drilling thru studs and noggins to pass water pipes and electric cables etc thru is another requirement. Most studs are far enough apart to get a drill close enough but there are a lot of half width stud spaces. Timber was cheap back then.

My facia board is only half height and the gutter sits on top of it. This makes it hard to level the gutter. I have to adjust the whole house level lol. As you live in Melbourne you may be aware of this sort of framing design. I have lived most of my life in SA and I had never seen the eaves below the ceiling like this except for a housing trust house that just had the rafters with facia on the end and nothing else.

Dean

Originally Posted by rogerbaker

Hi Dean
Just did a google search myself and came up with a page full of hits.
Note the spelling "Skewdriver"

Roger

You got me there. I stuffed up the spelling.

The one I was thinking about was plastic looking and had fat red sections coming off a central fat red shaft thingy. I think you were meant to rotate the head untill the right output was engaged and off you go.

The heavy duty scewdrivers are rated at 500 inch pounds which I presume is about 42 foot pounds. I should try driving in a screw partly in and checking the torque needed to continue with a torque wrench.

Dean

Yep, that's pretty much standard timber frame construction. On my old house the rafters were at 900 centres so it was dead easy to get a drill into the space between them. My fascia brackets could go on either side of the rafter, so the soffit bearers were never in the way. Good luck with it.

Hi Dean,
The Makita had enough torque that you had to be careful with the trigger, otherwise it would either rip itself from your hands or twist your wrists till you let go. Easily drove 14g? batten screws into dry hardwood with a 3/16 pilot.

This is what I use with tec tips.

I give it a caning in the shop and on my reno and it hasnt given up yet.

Also have a Makita angle drill which works fine, but a bit of a PITA up the ladder with a cord n all.

Woundnt recommend the Aldi angled adapter I have with Jacobs style chuck for heavy duty use. The gears dont feel too sturdy.

The drill bits we have with the hex ends twist out too easy for stubborn ##### like hardwood.

So yeah for your job I would go an angled drill and the unit shown in the pic for driving in the tecs.

Whilst doing a search I saw this old thread and thought I would finish it for now so to speak. An update on what has happened to date. The angle drive I got from Carbatec has been kept all this time just in case. A couple of months ago I saw it in the shed and decided to pull it apart and have a look at the internals. When pulling it apart a tiny circlip (about 10mm diam but 1mm width) went flying. Oops. Gone forever.

I continued pulling it apart and found nothing wrong with it and that the internal workings were actually quite strong. Great, what about the circlip. To cut it short a couple days later I found the circlip thru sheer luck, put it all back together and worked out the circlip would allow the bits to seperate which stopped it working. A bit of extra effort to locate it properly and the thing was fixed and worked just great. It appears the circlip needed some pressure on it to compress the bits before it would slip into the slot. It must have been missing this extra effort in its original assembly.

Dean