I would second Andy Carlson's good comments about Hansen Drills. Pretty fine. Ditto Tony's excellent advice about avoiding carbon steel drills (whose half life is commonly less than one project).

However, the situation is not always in our favor inasmuch as seemingly most serious industrial suppliers of good drills will sell drills to you only in sets of #61-80. In this regard, although you can start out with a fine set, but pretty soon because of inevitable breakage and dulling of commonly used bits, replacements are required. In this regard, I commonly fall back on Walthers and Masco at the LHS.

Now, I would be embarrassed to learn that these are indeed made of carbon steel, and in addition are made by eye and by hand in a remote village in Elbonia; but so far I have found them to be accurate and they seem to wear well.

Of the larger numbered drills (#1-60), with a few exceptions (breakage :-[ ), I am using the very same set of fine alloy ("high speed steel") drills that I purchased 45 years ago. The secret is keeping them sharp, and in this regard I have had the entire group re-sharpened probably at least three times. Resharpening a whole group is economical, while sharpening only a few is not (the expense is in the setting-up, the procedure of which is the same in either instance). The average cost of sharpening is often quoted to about 15% of the cost of a new premium drill.


Denny
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Denny S. Anspach, MD
Sacramento