Drilling Dog Holes the Right Way by OTB Thinker

hi hey buster welcome back to the shop today we're going to talk about how to drill your bench dog holes in your benches especially if you can't do it with the drill press then there are cases when you're not gonna be able to it's just as simple so in order to make that hole exactly perpendicular to your work surface I made a little jig now again remember as I've said before in my other videos I use only one pedal bit for all my drill drilling for bench dog holes that way they're all exactly the right size so now we're going to talk about the jig I made and how to make it and how to use it so that you can use a spade bit like this in order to do your drilling first off let's talk about the the bit it has a point at this end obviously it's flat and it tapers down here this has what I call the Goldilocks zone between here and here and what that means is this area of the shaft is all the same diameter when you get up here it starts to taper down when you get down here it starts to flatten out so the diameter is different but between here and here the diameter is the same on this bit and so that's the area that we want to reference when we're drilling between this area here and this point we will control keeping this bit exactly perpendicular as we drill so this area here has to ride in the jig as well as this point always against the bottom of the hole making contact in that between those two points that holds this bit so you started to make the jig that we're going to use you start with a board that is perfectly square it's 12 inches long Internet 3/4 inches wide and 2 and 3/4 inches tall and I take in that 7 inches from one end I've cut a piece off so now you have a seven and a five inch piece I take the five inch piece and I cut a 1 inch block off of it this way so I now have a 1 inch and a 1 and 3/4 inch piece and that gives me a 7 inch by one and three-quarter by two and three-quarter inch piece here for this block the biggest one the second one is one and three quarter by one and three quarter by five inches and this one is five inches by one inch by one in three quarters and so these three blocks make up the jig you take your first block and you drill the hole using your paddle bit halfway up into the block making sure that you're exactly perpendicular to your surface which will be in turn be make it perpendicular to the surface you're drilling into the rest of the way from this point up you drill the hole out to whatever this diameter of the shaft is now I go a 64th of an inch less than what this chef mics up to and then I use this by putting it in the hole hooking up to my drill and I spin it and it burns that hole out to the diameter of this so that you get a nice snug fit on your drill bit when it's in that Goldilocks zone in the hole and so it's important that that hole is pretty much not only perpendicular but is stays the diameter of your bit to help keep it from varying so by burnishing it the hole will last longer so on your first one you have the hole through to here and then the paddle bit hole is through here and you cut this area away so that you have a chip relief so all the chips can come out as you're drilling using this block take the block number one and put it on there and put this on your drill and lock it down take block number three which on this one hour test I should talk to this on this one the paddle bit I drill a hole through here on this area in making it as perpendicular to everything now you take block number one on your drill take block number three and put it on there also this is our block that we're going to drill into I kind of hung it off over the bench a little bit so that when I drill this hole it won't go into my workbench so you take your piece with lock number one and block number three on there you mark where your hole is put the point of your bit right in that hole drop your pieces down so that they're flat on the surface if you need to clamp it down clamp it down these blocks now what making this drill bed be exactly perpendicular to your surface and holding that in place you're gonna drill down till you run out to go to Godzone in this top block so you just start it up and drill out now you take that drove it out and now you have a little bit there put that back in the hole find the center put this block down now that is perpendicular again because you're writing in the Goldilocks zone on your drill bit and now you drill a little further and now you can take this out and take block number two which has just the hole all the way through it the diameter of your bit and drop it in there and put this one on there and now you can drop this down in there bottom you bit your block down make sure you're centered and now you can finish drilling now I'm starting to bust it at the bottom I'm not worried about it coming out the bottom at this point but you could drill up two or three and a half inches using this method and using this particular bit and I now have a hole drilled in my block so now you can just take your bench dog and fit it into the hole and then you can check it to see if it's straight 90 degrees in two directions which disappears to be so now my hole is perfect my doll is exactly 90 degrees to my surface here so this hole now will hold the dog bench dog and hold it straight so and that's just that simple so you have your three set blocks I showed you how to make them I showed you how to use them and so that's how I drill my holes perpendicular anywhere I do it and I can't do it with the drill press when you drill out these holes on your block make sure if you can to do it on a drill press because it's critical that these are exactly perpendicular to your surface that you're drilling the guide you drill bit straight so just make sure that these are perfectly straight and like I said a drill press would be even better to do it with so um and that's it in a nutshell if you have any questions about how this works and how to drill these you can let me know now there is one more thing I want to talk about real quick here and that is the set screw that I use on my dog holes on the outside dog holes on my workbench I go around the perimeter four inches apart except for in this area right here on the other side I had the dog holes on the edge but out here I don't and that's just nice to have that flat all the way out sometimes so this gives me almost anywhere I want to do something I can use a set up of the bench dog holes around the perimeter so but like now I put these Anchorage bolts in here use this to hold my piece as a vise to hold something clamp it to the table top and I talked about this before but in order to use this I use a set screw in the edge going in this way I just use a quarter inch set screw and it's a quarter inch by five sixteenths long set screw I drill a hole with my predetermined bit which isn't this bit is an eleven sixty four it's a bit and I drill that hole straight in so it goes into the hole usually about an inch below the top of the hole is about where I think these best place to have your bench dog hole so you drill this hole in till it goes in then you take your set screw and you screw it into the hole if you put this onto a drill with an Allen and put it in there you can just drive it in it'll cut its own threads on your wood depending on what kind of wood you're using so and once you've done that then what I can do quite simply is ready and I want to lock something down like this that's what the set screw helps me do so whether it's this or wood screw or whatever I want to use I can loosen this up now and take these out and I have my bench the whole dog back and I say these for the next time I need them so set screws I talked about them before they're actually very handy to have in your work bench in your dogs sometimes I like to be able to put something in the hole and just lock it down at an exact height that I want and then I can just lock it down with the set screw so putting this head screw on the outside holes is easy enough you just go straight in from the outside and then you tap it with the set screw but on an interior hole you have a slightly different issue because obviously you can't go straight in if the hole is back in here further so in order to get a set screw on a hole that's inside the surface I take and I doing a hole at an angle and it's three-quarters of an inch away from the hole so what I did was on my block that has this hole for the bench top for the drill bit it also will now fit / bench dog on that hole and what I do what I did was is I drilled a hole from here down to it so that it comes out on the bottom three-quarters of an inch from the edge of the dog hole so that means that this angle here is somewhere between 45 and 50 degrees the angles not critical but what I did here was quite simply by having that angle this is the start of the hole into your surface and if you measure up where it comes out right at the edge of the hole that's right at an inch and an eighth away from the top of the surface that means that that hole where it comes through is going to be at an inch in and hate from the top of the hole so it's V says down far enough that as long as you put your bench dog down at least two inches into the hole then you'll be able to use the set screw to lock it down on the interior hole by going in at an angle you can get that same effect so that this hole here I pre-drilled using this board and putting it on a bench dog like so and then I was able to take my drill and my drill bit started here and drill this down and I can set this wherever I want this to be in relationship to my bench dog set this down and now I can drill this hole down into the bench dog hole and when I get done I can put a set screw in there which I've got here and I can use that set screw now to screw it down until it makes contact to my bench dog when I put a bench dog in the hole so the set screw is a handy little feature to have on your bench dogs and be able to lock something in place whether it's this or it's a jig or something it's actually I found more and more uses for it after I started doing this so the set screw is also kind of nice to have as well as the consistent bench dog holes anyway I hope this enlighten you as to how I do it and what I do and why and especially like about the setscrew because I as I've been putting new set screws in all the dog holes as I've needed it but they have all these have their own set screw is actually very handy whether they're an inside hole or an outside hole so and with this Jade setup you should be able to do that without any problem I think I gave you enough instructions to build your own if that's what you want to do and you can do this with any spade bit so you can make your bench dogs any size you want just remember to always use only one bit whether it's a three quarter a one inch or a twenty millimeter it doesn't matter if you do a spade bit it'll makes it much easier to hog out the material when you drill the holes a lot easier than with a Forstner bit believe me so always protect this bit and keep it I keep this and I keep my Ginny and my one bit and I'll keep them all together for all the pieces so that this thing can not whoops so that and when I store it I'll be able to find all the pieces later on without any problem so if you have any questions give me a holler if you have any comments or observations please I love to read them please like this video if you did most importantly it'll come back because there's plenty more we're nowhere near done we'll see you again very soon bye

Channel: Russ Veinot

Views: 19,681

Keywords: woodshop, woodworking, otb thinker, bench dog, bench dog hole, drilling dog holes

Id: NMbbWVXCsMo

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2017