Making a Marking Knife #3: When the Bit's Too Small for the Brace

Still working on the marking knife. Now I need to drill a small (3/32”) hole for the tang of the blade. Got the bit, but it’s too small for the chuck of my bit brace. I decided to “mount” the bit inside a dowel, and either put the dowel in the bit brace, or just twist the “dowel drill” by hand.

First, I hammered a nail into the dowel, since it was easier than trying to twist the drill bit into the wood by hand. I wasn’t sure if it would split the dowel or not, but it didn’t.

Then I did a dry fit of the drill bit, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the nail hole was perfectly sized for the drill bit. It was nice and snug. So nice and snug, in fact, that I learned the hard way that pulling on the business end of a drill bit is usually a bad idea. You can see that the super glue is almost dry when I took this pic…

Slather some epoxy on the shank and pop that sucker in there!

My hole (and correspondingly, the drill bit) is not perfectly straight, so there is a very slight lean to the bit. However, it shouldn’t present a problem since I’ll be drilling at such low speeds. I actually haven’t cut the dowel down to size yet, so it’s still about 12-15” long. I might just leave it like that and use it two-handed when drilling the hole in the knife handle!

-- Eric at http://adventuresinwoodworking.com