Resurrecting an old friend

[Lemosteam]

Many years ago our own @up1950s, Richie Dost, created a wall wart driven pencil drill, from a 10 buck, battery driven,  Harbor Freight pencil screwdriver special and shared the idea on the on the A-board.

It was my all time favorite tool as it was slow, steady and had gobs of torque.

Then it died. Boo hooo!

I bought a couple more in an attempt to reconstruct it, but could not get the new one to work so it went into project purgatory. I stole the cheap three jaw chuck that I put on it to use on my Tamiya hand drill kit.

I never liked the new drill because I could not get the chuck to run true and so would break all of my tiny carbide pc board drills.

Not sure why, but I came across the rebuilt, mothballed drill and plugged it in. Boom, it worked? WTH?

Now I just needed a new chuck from an eBay seller. Pretty good price for two! The shanks are your standard 1/4” hex for quick release drill drivers.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2X-1-4-Hex-Shank-Keyless-Chuck-Conversion-Adapter-Drill-Bit-Quick-Change-Driver/265814261656

I unscrewed the chuck off the shank, chucked it into my drill press with the shank out, and filed it to a 0.162” diameter to light press into the output shaft which has a 1/8” bit drive.

A little daub of JB Qwik weld and I was back in biz.

So, so glad for Richies original idea, and for the fact I can drill small grab holes with confidence again.

I love this little guy. Thanks again Richie!



The Guts:



The Juice:



The Glory:

[ednadolski]

Does anyone (MicroMark? Other?) make a chuck than can go down to 0.000" (or so... I need to hold a #94, ~0.007"...  yep, will be quite fragile even with HSS not carbide bits).

Ed

[peteski]

John,
I'm a bit confused.  So the workign tool shown in these photos is the original one you build after you saw Richies  (with new chuck  added), or is it the new one you built?

Ed N.:  Albrecht (or other brand) precision keyless chucks close down to 0.2mm diameter,  but they are pricey.
https://www.albrecht-germany.com/en/products/1stdrill-chuck/inner-taper/

[Lemosteam]

John,
I'm a bit confused.  So the workign tool shown in these photos is the original one you build after you saw Richies  (with new chuck  added), or is it the new one you built?

I tried to rebuild the old drill with new parts and for some reason it did not work.  This is the rebuild.  The original lasted over 10 years.

[up1950s]

Thanks for the credit John . Too bad these sound like a brontosaurs though . Sometimes when the wife is sleeping and I want to drill many tiny holes I have to use hand drills . IIRC Micro Mark started to offer these about a year or so after I made the post here . Sure would like to have a quite and true running model .

[NtheBasement]

Does anyone (MicroMark? Other?) make a chuck than can go down to 0.000" (or so... I need to hold a #94, ~0.007"...  yep, will be quite fragile even with HSS not carbide bits).

Ed

I've chucked a pin vise in my drill press to do this.

[up1950s]

Does anyone (MicroMark? Other?) make a chuck than can go down to 0.000" (or so... I need to hold a #94, ~0.007"...  yep, will be quite fragile even with HSS not carbide bits).

Ed

https://www.amazon.com/Piece-Pin-Chuck-Set-Capacity-Small/dp/B07JZN1F4Z

[peteski]

I tried to rebuild the old drill with new parts and for some reason it did not work.  This is the rebuild.  The original lasted over 10 years.

I guess I'm still confused John. Sorry.  You said "tried to rebuild the old drill with new parts and for some reason it did not work" then "This is the rebuild". So does the current working "rebuilt" unit similar looking to your original one?  Does it use parts of the original drill?