5 Drill Features Everyone Should Know

i recently conducted a poll and 82 percent of people said that they were unfamiliar with at least one of these five features on a cordless drill let's see how you do feature number five is how to properly use the side handle to prevent kickback many full-size drills like this come with a side handle to help prevent kickback and to help you get a better grip while drilling if you're not familiar with kickback it's the process where if you're drilling and then the drill bit binds up in the material the whole drill tends to kick over and causes quite an issue you can definitely injure or even break your wrist or your arm if you're not careful anytime you're drilling something and you have to use a lot of the torque of the drill it's a good idea to put this side or auxiliary handle on but there is a right way and a wrong way to attach it and to use it it's actually best if you're right-handed to keep this at the nine o'clock position as you're looking at the back of the drill so you want it sticking straight out to one side and that way you can use your left hand and the way you can do that though is you can actually drill with the drill sideways laying over on its side like this so that when you're drilling you're holding it with this hand your left hand can help hold it in place and if it kicks it's going to kick into your left hand as opposed to away from it where it's going to maybe break that grip so that way you've got extra protection on both the left and right hand if you're left handed the same thing applies just over on the other side you want to keep it in that three o'clock position over here and then instead of laying it down on its side like this you can do that but you can also just keep it like this and put your hand on top and you'll get a better grip and again when it starts to kick it's going to kick this way and won't break your grip as someone who's been on the wrong end of drill kickback believe me this little tip can save you a lot of pain and suffering feature number four is knowing how and when to use your drill's clutch the clutch is this little set of numbers that wraps around the top of the barrel on the drill here the clutch allows you to select how much torque or force to use on the drill before it disengages now when it disengages or basically stops spinning that front chuck that's actually called slip and that's an intentional feature so that you don't overdo it let's say for example you needed to drive some very small screws into some wood and you want to get them just countersunk you want them to get them just even with the surface but nothing more than that you can take the clutch here and set it to a lower number let's say five here for example and what that does is after a certain amount of force is applied even if you're squeezing that trigger it will no longer spin the chuck it's going to slip at that point to prevent any strip out from the screws or overdoing it now if it's not providing enough torque when you do that you can always increase that torque by rotating that clutch up to a higher number you certainly don't always need to use the clutch but when you do need it it's a great feature to have if you pre-drill something by drilling a small hole before you drive a screw in for example you can turn the clutch down quite a bit because you're not going to require nearly as much torque in order to drive the screw all the way in one really basic feature that i think everybody pretty much knows about but just to cover all of our bases here there is this little directional button here and this basically just allows you to put the mode into forward like this you can switch it with your thumb and push back like this to go into reverse or if you want to lock it so that the trigger can't even be squeezed then you just keep it in the middle section here the range of numbers on the clutch is going to vary quite a bit from manufacturer to manufacturer it doesn't really matter so this one starts down at one on this milwaukee m18 and this one goes up to 16 it looks like and then caps out there feature number three is shifting gears now just like a manual transmission car or truck these drills have the option almost every time to shift gears the sliding selector is almost always located at the top of the drill like this and most of them have two speeds but some of them actually have three or four the general idea is pretty simple the first gear gives you the most torque but the lower speed if you switch it into second gear like this it's going to give you higher speed but less torque in my experience second gear is ideal for drilling holes because it gets that faster speed and you don't typically need quite the torque and in first gear you're going to get that higher torque so that's a good option for using when you're driving a screw or a fastener in unlike a manual transmission vehicle the last thing you want to do is try to switch gears while the drill is in motion you can't just press in on the clutch and shift gears that's definitely not a good idea make sure the drill is completely stopped before you switch in between gears feature number two is the keyless ratcheting chuck most cordless drills nowadays have a keyless chuck which means that unlike back in the day when we had to use those awkward keys to tighten or loosen the chuck now you can just turn the chuck with your hand to tighten or loosen it or more commonly people will typically hold the housing of the drill if i open this up a little bit hold this with one hand and then squeeze the trigger to tighten with the other there we go more and more commonly drills are coming with what's called a ratcheting chuck which means that after you tighten it into place you can then turn a little bit further and you'll hear the clicking of the ratchet that ratchets it right down i'm going to put my mic up close to this so you can hear the ratcheting here there we go this helps you to know that it's securely in place and you've ratcheted it all the way down same thing applies with this milwaukee drill for example just hold this trigger in place okay and then you already heard a little ratcheting there but there we go so now that's securely in place in my research for this i actually discovered a bonus tip that i think deserves its own video so i'm going to be showing that in a future video probably next week and if that video is out by the time you're watching this then you can check that clip out right up here before i get to my number one feature i just want to encourage you to take a look at the comments section below and see if there's some other tips that you can find down there i think in the grand scheme of things i probably know about this much about drills and about all of these topics there's so much to learn so let's get the learn to diy hive mind buzzing down in the comments section our number one feature for today is drill mode and this is actually the feature that most people were unfamiliar with nearly all modern drills today allow you to choose between at least two if not three different drill modes the drill mode which is represented by this little drill bit icon here doesn't engage the clutch at all so it doesn't matter what your clutch is set to if you're in drill mode it's just going to go full force all the time drive mode which is represented by the little screw icon here will leverage the clutch and whatever setting that's in if your drill like this one doesn't have hammer mode which we'll talk about more in just a moment then you really just have two settings you've got the drill mode here which is indicated by this drill bit icon or you can use the clutch and twist it over to a number to put you in your drive mode and then it will limit the torque like we talked about earlier when you're in drill mode however it's going to go as fast as it can based on the gear that you're in and how hard you're squeezing that trigger on hammer drills like this one you'll see a third option with this little hammer icon right here now this might sound similar to what an impact driver does but it's actually quite different an impact driver makes impact motions actually in the same direction as you're rotating the drill so if you're drilling this in forward mode like this it's kind of like slamming a steering wheel over and over in that same direction along with the drill if you do it in reverse it can do that as well it can kind of hammer it back out unlike an impact drill when you're using hammer mode it's kind of like having a hammer that's tapping on the back of the drill as you're using it it's going to give that extra strength you need and this is actually specifically for really difficult or tough objects to get through so for example if you're doing any masonry work and what i like to think is if you've got a masonry bit in here switch it to hammer mode there are a few different mechanisms that are used to create that hammering action but this is one of the more common ones i purchased this really nice and fancy 17 hammer drill from harbor freight this is their warrior series and i took it apart just to show you how this works there is a set of toothed gears right in here that smack against each other when you push down on the chuck now the entire chuck is actually pushed away from the body of the drill using a spring so when there's no pressure on the chuck the hammer action isn't engaged as soon as you push that drill against the material and push that spring down it will start hammering as these two little wheels engage and begin colliding with one another this hammering action like i mentioned before totally comes in handy and speeds things up on masonry projects were any of these features new to you or maybe did you misunderstand them at some point if so i'd love to hear what you learned in the comments section below also don't forget to check out below on our merch shelf where you can pick up some cool diy shirts or other swag my name is nils with learn to diy thanks for watching

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 1,433,062

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: VN0ZE-wDcto

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 18 2022