Can a budget MAG DRILL get the job done

this was probably a really bad idea so I don't recommend you try it at home but I was curious to see if it would work and since this video is sponsored by vivore I thought I might as well try using the vivore mag drill on the vivore handle there's no doubt cheap bargain brand tools can save you money in your shop and allow you to get some things that you might not otherwise be able to afford but are they really worth it in the long run do they wear out so fast that you're going to end up spending twice as much money buying multiples of cheap tools than you would if you just bought one tool right up front that's really hard to say and I don't think I'm going to answer that in this video but I realize that a lot of people simply don't have the budget to buy the name brand tools and most of us don't have the budget to buy the top of the line industrial tools and while I generally believe in buying the best tool you can afford sometimes that's the budget tool and sometimes you're never going to get your money's worth out of a name brand tool if you're only going to use it a few times a year or only need it for one project then the budget tools might be the way to go but right now vivore who sells budget friendly import tools like sending things first to look at here on the channel and I don't see any reason to turn those down even if they aren't necessarily what I would buy so far everything they have sent has been a completely usable tool it gets the job done and today we're going to look at the mag drill kind of like a mini drill press but instead of being wobbly because it's kind of lightweight and doesn't have a base on it any steel surface you put this on becomes its base there's a powerful electromagnet and now that thing is solid I might be able to pick up the workbench using the magnet on this drill and that's what makes these things really useful for me most of what I've used mag drills for in the past is actually working on a steel bench like this when I wanted to mount a vise or a Whitney Punch or a Beverly Shear something like that this is way better for drilling holes in your steel workbench than trying to do all that with a hand drill or even with a cutting torch a MAG drill is the right tool for the job the question is is this budget-friendly mag drill that Viva wants us to look at really going to do the job what can you do with it right off the top I'm going to say if you're going to use a MAG drill day in and day out in your business if you're doing big steel construction work where you have to drill i-beams and angle irons and you're working with this thing upside down because the magnet will hold it upside down it's got a safety strap so it doesn't fall off if you lose power you'll probably want to name brand mag drill with a few more features this one might have but if you've got a small blacksmith shop and occasionally you need to mount a tool to your steel workbench maybe you're doing some sort of an install job where you need to drill holes in some vertical framing member or overhead framing member and you only do that a few times a year and for the price this might be a good choice for those kind of jobs now most mag grills that I've used in the past are single speed this one actually has a variable speed knob so that could come in handy for something it's got the switch that activates the magnet that turns it on and it's magnetized power switch and for safety reasons the magnet is the first Power that has to come on if the magnets off you can't turn this on so there's no risk of accidentally starting the drill trying to drill and having it move around on you I think that's probably true for most mag drills this did come with a conventional style drill chuck so you can take up to I think half inch drill bits in this mag drills are typically used with Hollow drill bits called annular Cutters and those are really a fast efficient way to drill larger diameter holes in plate and structural members things like that but this does not come with them vivore does have some packages where you can get a similar drill with annular Cutters or you can buy the Cutters separate from an industrial supplier just depends on whether or not you need them and whether or not you need a whole set you may just need one size now I don't have a steel bench that needs a hole drilled in it so I'm going to clamp something up and kind of mock up that situation and then we can see how this drills don't say a half inch hole in a piece of steel plate okay now right off I see a problem trying to use a half inch bit in this the way it is oh maybe it's not up all the way quite enough room you'll need shorter length drill bits probably for this particular drill if you're using longer Bits And as bits get bigger diameter they tend to get longer this just doesn't quite have the reach you'd have to shim this up which for most uses for magnetic drill I wouldn't recommend so I'm going to go to a shorter bit and we'll still drill a hole in this piece of half inch plate but you can buy short drill bits and those would probably work fine in this and the annular Cutters are considerably shorter now V4 did send this little drill out at no charge they are sponsoring the video but they don't provide any talking points I get to say whatever I want about this drill that's one of the things I kind of like about working with vivore is they don't make you jump through those Hoops so I'm going to get you as honest review of this as I can although in an hour or two hours of use here this morning I'm not really going to be able to form a solid opinion on how good this is you would have to use this thing for months years to really find out I'm just going to find out is it a functional tool the way it comes out of the box [Music] thank you [Music] foreign 3 8 hole in a piece of one inch plate does bog down a little bit but it got the job done and I think if you then went up to a half inch bit it would do that you just have to buy shorter half inch bits and what I've created here might as well be a little drill press I can now bring other stock in here don't have to magnetize this to the material you're drilling you can magnetize it to a table and use it just like you would a drill press [Applause] foreign work of drilling a 3 16 hole in piece of quarter inch flat bar that might be a really good use for something like this if you have a small shop don't have a dedicated drill press or a place to put one something like this will go under your bench on a shelf in a cabinet wherever it is you need to store it and it's easy to get out and set up if you just have a little steel work table and you could probably design a little base for this that brings it up and gives you enough Reach For Those longer drill bits the drill chuck is just held in by some set screws and takes up considerably more space than an annular cutter does these actually come with a center pin and that's used to align with a center punch Mark if you need a center punch Mark but that then retracts all the way back up into here [Music] foreign and it cuts a slug out I'm going to set up a little guide here at least I'm going to try to I'm putting in a cutter that's got about a 3 8 inside diameter because it's for this I want the inside and I have a piece of 5 8 square bar that I've Center punched the center of but we're going to do this all the time I would make a better setup for this instead of this quick clamped up thing [Music] [Applause] [Applause] thank you [Music] thank you so if you do a really good job of getting that set up so everything is perfectly aligned perfectly centered perfectly Plumb although this does look very straight it's just not quite perfectly centered you can use that for creating tenons it would be very repeatable and it would be very efficient once it's set up so if you had to do a hundred tenons for a big gate or something like that this might be a good way to go my understanding is that the Samuel Yellen shop used to do it this way I don't know if they used a MAG drill or if they had a milling machine that ran Hollow drill bits or how they did it but this is not a new idea now there's one other thing I'd like to try with this mag drill I don't know if it's a good idea or not but I figured since vivor sent me the mag drill and since vivor sent us the little Anvil that doesn't have a very useful pretzel hole I'm going to see if I can drill a pretzel hole in this Anvil now I don't necessarily recommend this the Anvil is hardened steel and it's good and hard I can't really make a good center punch Mark in it without flattening my center punch but a drill bit should be a lot harder than the Anvil is so I'm going to give it a try worst case scenario I end up with a little divot where I didn't want one one or maybe I can buy a higher quality drill bit I don't have any Cobalt bits I think they're supposed to be a little bit harder and of course a solid carbide bit would drill this no problem but it's really easy to shatter a solid carbide drill bit foreign [Music] so that's a really bad idea I wouldn't recommend trying that at home but I thought it was worth trying I'm really not out anything other than I'm going to have to sharpen that drill bit now but that hardly even lifted Dent which really attests to how hard these acio anvils that vivore sells really are so that's a good thing in that regard I guess still don't have a good usable pretzel hole for this Anvil but it's not the end of the world you can punch over the hearty hole I didn't really think I'd be able to drill a pretzel hole in that little Anvil but I thought it was worth a try and I'm really not out anything if I had hurt the Anvil worst case I'd have a little dimple in there and really all I got out of that was about what a center punch mark would have been if I could have marked it with a center punch but that's all the drill cup was maybe a 30 second of an inch deep it's not a very deep Mark not going to affect anything that's not someplace I'm doing any heavy forging it would be an ideal place for a pretzel hole but I really doubt I'm going to go buy a solid carbide bit for 40 or 50 or however much they cost just to find out if that would work it's tempting and who knows maybe I'll change my mind at some point but that has nothing to do with the drill the drill spun the drill bit just fine it's just the drill bit was not capable of cutting through the hardened steel Anvil but now the question is is this a usable tool that should have a place in your shop well I can't tell you if it should have a place in your shop or not I have another mag drill that's probably a little bit higher quality than this so I'll probably pass this one on to somebody else I got a buddy that says he doesn't have a MAG drill so if he wants this I'm going to give it to Mike but if you have a very limited budget and you have need for mag drill this might not be a bad option this is under 200 and that includes the shipping here in the U.S so if you were going to go rent one three or four times over the next couple of years you probably would be money ahead buying this and if you only lasted through those three or four uses you wouldn't be out anything and I'm sure it's going to last a lot longer than that if you're setting up shop and you're building steel benches and you need to drill holes for mounting vices this would get the job done I haven't tried it overhead or anything like that because I just don't have any need for that and I don't have any overhead steel or vertical Steel in this building but all I have are the benches and the tools that have horizontal surfaces this does come with a safety strap and if you're using it anything but flat on a horizontal surface you need to put the safety strap on it so that if you lose power it doesn't fall off and hurt somebody also comes with a little cooling tank so you can put some cutting fluid or even just water in this mounts the other side of the drill over here has a hose that goes to a little valve on the bottom and that way you can run some something to keep your bits cool which for the annular Cutters is probably worthwhile because those things can be pretty expensive whether this tool fits your needs in your shop is entirely up to you it's a functional tool it gets the job done it does what a MAG drill needs to do no idea how long it's going to last it certainly doesn't have all the bells and whistles I've used other mag drills that the magnetic base can be set in place but the drill is still adjustable it has a separate lock down for the drill so you get that drill bit alignment just perfect even though it's already magnetized down to the base and that's kind of a nice feature not absolutely necessary old mag drills didn't have that the other mag drill I own doesn't have that and this and of course this one doesn't have it but I was able to line it up with a center punch Mark of those test pieces so it's not an absolute necessity it's a little bit loose in here in the guides there's just a little bit of play but those are adjustable there's some set screws on the side you can fiddle around with that and probably get that nice and snugged up and it would run a little bit more true and since the drill bit wants to grab the center punch Mark I don't really think that hurts much at this point if it gets any sloppier I would certainly adjust it I want to thank vivor for sponsoring today's video their sponsorship is helping fund the improvements in the little hand tool shop so we get that set up and ready to go and start making some of the videos over there in the meantime I hope you have time in your day to get out to your shop be safe wear your safety glasses we'll see you for the next video

Channel: Black Bear Forge

Views: 25,926

Keywords: Blacksmith, blacksmithing for beginners, black bear forge, john switzer, Blacksmithing, Blacksmithing project, how to blacksmith, blacksmith shop, blacksmith forge, learn blacksmithing, forge, anvil, blacksmith anvil, forging, hand forged, vevor mag drill, vevor magnetic base drill, mag drill, magnetic drill, Can a budget MAG DRILL get the job done, are cheap tools any good, cheap tools a waste of money, budget friendly tools, metal working, metal work, fabrication, tool review

Id: o_VnWPvFE9w

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023