Quality taps and drill bits

SKS Ray

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I'm tired of spending money on what Home Depot and Lowes consider high end drill bits and taps. I'd like to get a few to last more than one job.

Anyone have a source they deal with for industrial taps and drill bits?
 
MSC, material supply company is what a lot of machine shops order from. We use a lot of OSG and Balax taps among others. MSC has a lot to choose from. Same goes for drills
 
I like enco and get Clevland Twist Drill brand. Seem to cut nice threads. If you are doing stuff on guns use Brownells or Midway and get carbon steel taps. If they break you can get them out a lot easier than a HSS tap.

B
 
I use craftsman taps and dies. Lifetime garrantee and all. DeWalt drill bits have worked for me. Ymmv
 
ask a machinist, be prepared to pay. McMaster-Carr has decent stuff..I will secound brownells as they will have the common "gunsmithy" sizes.
 
I'll give Enco a second! They have every kind of bit you can imagine. From cheap junk to top quality machine shop pieces. If you get their catalog, in it you will find great descriptions of every type of bit they sell. You can't go wrong with Enco if you read all the info they give you. I learned a lot about drill bits, end mills, countersinks, etc... just from reading their catalog!
 
I have 2 Saiga trunnions to drill and tap for bullet guides and some gas and sight blocks to drill for retaining pins. Eventually I'll be doing a VZ54/91 sniper project and that will require drilling and tapping a Mosin M39 receiver.
I had bought a small set of Ridgid brand drill bits from Home Depot that were supposedly made for hard steel but all it took was drilling 1 SKS receiver and 2 Saigas to dull the hell out of the bits I needed in the set.
What I'm really looking for are #6-32 and #8-32 drill and tap combos.
 
hanson for taps and dies. this is the company who makes them for mac and snap on. as for drill bits, snap on ones have out lasted all others i have had if not over heated
 
Receivers tend to be hard and are best drilled on rigid machinery with a solid vice holding the receiver. If it's case hardened you may need to get under the case to be able to drill into it. Brownells has what you want.

B
 
Did you try a grinder to put a new edge on the bits? I have a seperate box for those in need of sharpening.
 
I use craftsman taps and dies. Lifetime garrantee and all. DeWalt drill bits have worked for me. Ymmv


Same here.

My Father bought my Craftsman Tap/Die set in 1972. He gave it to me when I was 18 and just got a job as an Auto. Tech. They have served me well.

I have Dewalt Drill Bit's as well. I have broken plenty of them, but for the most part they are ok. A good sharpener helps as well.
 
Proper tapping REQUIRES the right sized hole........................

If you're guessing as to what size hole to drill, then you'll always get in trouble...........

Here's a GREAT chart, showing the drill sizes to use for the various tap sizes.

http://www.efunda.com/designstandards/screws/tapdrill.cfm

NOTE: Almost none of the drill sizes are "fractional" sizes. They are somewhat special sizes that will give you proper tapped threads.

So, if you are using a 5/32 drill to tap 12-24 threads, you are doing it wrong...... The proper drill size for a 12-24 thread is a #16 drill bit. A 1/4-20 thread requires a #7 drill bit, etc......

The 6-32 thread tap requires a #36 drill bit......

The 8-32 tapped thread requires a #29 drill bit..............

One of the machinist tips is to use a smaller drill bit to start drilling the hole the hole (all the way through!), and then go back and re-drill to the final size. That will give you a rounder hole, and be kinder on the final bit. Use good lubricant when drilling the hard stuff. The instant your hole runs dry, and the bit heats up, it's over.
 
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Enco, Mcmaster, and MSC are great sources or if you want someplace a little closer to home wholesale tool in stoughton, ma carries a great selection of everything for really really cheap. They also stock precision twist drill which is a decent brand, but don't overlook the cheap cobalt drills they stock because they are great .... the website is www.wttool.com
 
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hanson for taps and dies. this is the company who makes them for mac and snap on. as for drill bits, snap on ones have out lasted all others i have had if not over heated

+1 for hanson, they are made by Irwin which make the "vise grip" brand....I use them quite a bit (no pun intended) the drill bits are second to none, the taps are good but I prefer Cleavland for my taps, but I'm picky in the fact that all of my taps have to be true bottoming taps and the hanson taps have just a little bit too much taper on their bottom taps
 
MSC, material supply company is what a lot of machine shops order from. We use a lot of OSG and Balax taps among others. MSC has a lot to choose from. Same goes for drills



also look at Travers, i have a good friend that is a machinist who turned me on to them. but you're right, i have bought things from both

http://www.travers.com/index.asp
 
wholesale tool they have a warehouse in stoughton

This.

Unless you want to buy the high end "made in the USA" stuff, then go with McMaster Carr

I prefer cobalt bits when drilling harder steel, Wholesale Tool carries them, and the manager there is both a friend and a "gun guy"

as said before, proper drill size is critical when it comes to tapping
 
My Craftsman set outlasted Home Despot/ Lowes/HF sets, but the latter are useful for "suicide" jobs, from which bits are not likely to return. [sad]

Tapping threads is not a trivial job and having the right drill size is key. There may be several drill sizes, depending on % you're tapping.

Anyone knows if there is a local store that sells "gun threads", like 6-40? Those usually are not in the regular kits.
 
My Craftsman set outlasted Home Despot/ Lowes/HF sets, but the latter are useful for "suicide" jobs, from which bits are not likely to return. [sad]

Tapping threads is not a trivial job and having the right drill size is key. There may be several drill sizes, depending on % you're tapping.

Anyone knows if there is a local store that sells "gun threads", like 6-40? Those usually are not in the regular kits.[/QUOT

Metric screw and tool in wakefield can probably get you any size you want...they are my "go to" guys for oddball sti taps...ask for Dave real good guy and knows his stuff and how to source it if they don't have it
 
Whats your budget for drill bits? Bad Dog tools in Bristol RI sells the best bits out there, really good people too. I broke a bit over the winter drilling out a 3" stainless steel prop shaft and they replaced it for me with no issues. They are on the pricy side, but you will never have to buy another bit again (unless you loose the bit). Here is the link: http://www.baddogtools.com/dotnetnuke/
 
When your eyes get older a drill doctor comes in pretty handy to. The hardness of the material also dictates the angle on the face of the bit, ask a machinist about your specific task before you buy, it might make the difference between success and failure.
 
I ended up with a 6-32 Craftsman drill and tap combo set and drilled a trunnion last night. The bit cut through it like butter and made a nice clean hole. I wish I could say the same for the tap because a small chunk of it is stuck in my trunnion right now.[sad2]

I used plenty of cutting oil, went slow backed it out to get rid of the chips, etc. every thing I've done before and read. I got the tap all the way through but couldn't get the screw started and realized I needed to go further with the tap so I re-oiled, screwed in the tap, and went a few more turns. Then I started to back it out and it snapped flush with the trunnion. I tried backing it out with needle nosed pliers from underneath because about 1/16 of the tap was poking through but that snapped. Then I tried picks, center punches, and finally shattering it with skinny punches but wound up just bending breaking them abnd the tap is still in there.

I'm off to a few hardware stores to look for thinner/stronger punches and will try it some more when I get home.
 
Ray I have a set of broken tap extractors made just for this purpose. I don't know if I have one for that size, if I do you are welcome to borrow it. I'll go take a look. That's what you should be looking for anyway.
 
Doing a search on broken taps I found a machinists forum where some people mentioned diamond bits to remove the tap. I ended up getting a small thin Dremel diamond particle covered bit from Home Depot and decided to try it last night.

After making contact with what was left of the tap I began to notice fine grey powder residue building up and knew it was working. I kept blowing off the residue with a can of compressed air so I could see what I was doing and in about 2 minutes I had gone deep enough to see a small hole where one of the flutes was. I dug the point of the bit in there and started working towards the rest of the tap and managed to remove almost all of it. Then I clamped the receiver down in my drill press and with the drill bit that came with the tap combo set was able to clear the rest of the bits of the tap from the hole with ease.

I ended up going with a drill bit that came with a combo kit for an 8-32 tap and used a tap I got from Snap On and had success installing the bullet guide.[grin]
 
FWIW, another good way of removing taps that are in non-carbon steel such as titanium or aluminum is to go to radio shack and buy a buttle of "pcb etchant" which is ferric choride. It will 100% eat a tap which is high carbon steel, but won't eat AL or TI. It will eat some "stainless" depening on what kind of stainless it is...
 
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