Drilling clean holes

[Scott Welty]

Hello all -
My daughter and I are making herb strippers. You stick a stem of some herb in the appropriate hole and pull it through and off come the leaves. Yeah, I never heard of one either. Our prototype works well but we are not happy with the raggedness of the holes mostly just for aesthetics. But, also, we wonder about all the open grain within the hole over time.

These are made by gluing up 3 types of 6/4 lumber - Walnut, Red Oak, Poplar and then re-sawing to make 3 thin slabs. We cut these slabs into 4 inch squares and then glue them together with the grain crosswise. Final piece is about 5/16 thick.

New drill bits? Faster drill speed?

looking forward to your advise.

Scott455758455757455759

[Paul F Franklin]

You should be able to do much better. Even a sharp regular twist bit should do better if you run it at the right speed and back up the piece with a piece of scrap. A sharp, good quality brad point will do even better. Make sure you clamp the workpiece to the backer board or it will lift up when the bit breaks through and you'll get a rough exit hole.

[Bill Carey]

on the other hand, the roughness of the holes may be helping to grab the leaves and pull them off. But yes, a sharp bit will do much better.

[Andrew Hughes]

Look for a lipped drill bit.
They will cut very clean holes on both sides. Drill press for best results
They look like this

[Cary Falk]

I would use a brad point drill bit with a backer board. I would suggest replacing the red oak with something like cherry maple or teak. They are not porous like red oak. I assume these will get wet. I'm not sure about popular. I assume it is not used on cutting boards because it is soft.

[Stan Calow]

What size is/are the hole(s) for this purpose? Yeah, I'd avoid red oak, because its too splintery. This sounds like a good niche product for farmer's markets and crafts shows.

[Charles Coolidge]

Two suggestions from the metalworking side, 4 flute center cutting end mills and triple flute drill bits for cleaner more accurate holes. And for those of us obsessed with accuracy they make a 30x periscope with a cross hair you can chuck in your drill press to position the workpiece in then center of a scribed line, yeah that accurate. :D

[Alan Lightstone]

... And for those of us obsessed with accuracy they make a 30x periscope with a cross hair you can chuck in your drill press to position the workpiece in then center of a scribed line, yeah that accurate. :D
OK. You can't put that one out there without a link... It's just not right...

[Malcolm McLeod]

OK. You can't put that one out there without a link... It's just not right...

Second that.

[Frederick Skelly]

Second that.

Me too. I want one of those.

[Doug Garson]

Drill an undersized thru hole then drill full size hole part way thru, flip the board over and drill the rest of the way from the other side. Best done in a drill press. The undersized drill bit can be any type, the full size bit should be a plain spiral bit which will easily self center, a Forstener or brad point will be harder to center unless the first bit is very small.

[Charles Coolidge]

OK. You can't put that one out there without a link... It's just not right...

Okay here's a link, turns out they are 45x scopes. This one has a 1 inch focal distance (recommended over the 5/8 inch).

https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/06539332

[Walter Plummer]

Here is another option for close work. https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/93712990. You line up on your marks through the optic then replace the optic with the punch and strike to mark your hole.

[Rick Potter]

I would stack half a dozen at a time. Use a backer board and clamp them down. Pretty easy to make a jig to do that. Shape it later.

[John K Jordan]

I use a laser for precise alignment on the milling machine and sometimes the drill press: https://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=2604

But such precision on an herb stripper makes no sense to me.

Those with painfully sensitive sense of linear misalignment might consider a more organic layout. This one also has a flat edge they claim is useful for scraping the herbs off the work surface into the bowl.

455852

[Bob Falk]

I use a laser for precise alignment on the milling machine and sometimes the drill press: https://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=2604

But such precision on an herb stripper makes no sense to me.

Those with painfully sensitive sense of linear misalignment might consider a more organic layout. This one also has a flat edge they claim is useful for scraping the herbs off the work surface into the bowl.

455852


+1 I use this one on my cnc router. Very fine point.

[Jim Becker]

Very sharp, lipped brad-points and a backer board tight to the surface where the drill will exit from the workpiece.

[glenn bradley]

Drilling holes at a set speed regardless of the bit size or material type is one of the more often seen mistakes. Your small holes can all be drilled at a fairly fast speed. Too slow will increase the raggedness of smaller holes. For you exit wounds, as mentioned, a well clamped backer board will assure a clean exit. Although they may be overkill for this project I run lipped brad point bits for my furniture work. Nice clean holes.