Doings (Drill) Bits – Basic, Better, Best

We all love a good bit of drilling action. It’s one of those things we can all have a crack at, and it’s often a job that delivers results. You either drill a hole, or you don’t. There’s no middle ground. If you drill a hole, you have succeeded in drilling. Take a bow. Of course, there are levels of how enjoyable a good drill session can be. This all falls on the tools you’re using. You of course, need a quality drill with which to, um, drill. But you also need some good drill bits. The old adage of ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ most certainly applies here. A cheap drill bit or set of bits will leave you angry and frustrated, and more importantly than that, they may well damage whatever you’re drilling, which in the context of this website, means your car. So, take a leaf out of our book and buy one of the sets listed below. Thank us later.

Basic

Okay, so we said that to buy cheap is to buy twice, and we stand by that. By ‘cheap’ we are of course referring to the quality. You can still indulge in a bargain set of drill bits. Take this little Bosch set, for example. It comes in at (at the time of writing this) under £9. That, dear reader, is a bargain. And we can tell you first-hand that this is a good little set, as we have on ourselves. It’s not the most comprehensive, but then it’s not trying to be. It’s meant to be a handy kit to help out when needed. You get metal bits, wood bits, masonry bits, screwdriver bits and adapters and even a countersink bit. All for under a tenner. Don’t think about it, just buy it.

Better

If you’re about to embark on a big restoration, or if you’re building stuff, or if you simply just want a good stock of drill bits at your disposal for the foreseeable, what you need is this 130 piece set from Hi-Spec. At a hair under £30, it is again firmly within the bargain territory, and with 1,147 ratings averaging a four-and-a-half out of five stars, you know it’s going to be decent. You get 78 HSS titanium-coated bits for metal, you get 26 wood bits and you 26 Tungsten-carbide tipped masonry bits, too. All in a handy case. As we said, if you’re doing a lot of drilling, this is the set you need.

Best

Regarded by many to be one of the best in the business, this metal drill bit set from Irwin is going to be perfect if you’re doing a lot of metal work. The set only caters to metal, but if you’re restoring  car, that’s what you’re going to need the most. The drill bit body is manufactured from high quality HSS steel coated with 2.5 Titanium Nitride (TiN), and Titanium Nitrate (TiN) is also a poor conductor of heat, so the heat generated during the drilling process is diverted into the chips and coolant and less into the drill bit. If you want a set of drill bits that won’t fade, that won’t wander and that will offer precise hols time after time, this is the set you need.