Everything you need to know about drilling and tapping holes | DIY

[Music] hey this is david with hagerty in our diy video series today i'm going to talk about drilling and tapping your own holes into fresh stock first thing you'll need a tap and die set you don't need something this large you may only need a single tap based on your usage and we'll go over that secondly you're going to need some sort of drill you're going to need the right size drill to go with the tap that you're using again you do not need a huge set or a huge index you only need the right drill for the right tap and then secondly you're going to need some way to rotate the tap into your stock you can either use this t-style handle and there's also these specific holders and then of course just a ratchet and some fashion to rotate it now we can also get into using a drill as far as the drills are concerned and most importantly don't forget lube uh rapid tap or cutting fluid in this case really does two things it does help cut the metal and uh and it also creates some lubrication in there so it does not bind up and of course overheat and some things like that and of course it's also important when you're drilling the hole and then secondly we can go over utilizing a drill press which is probably the best way to drill a hole and also a very good way to run a tap in and yes you can do that but you have to go slow all right so that's the tools let's get into some detail first let's talk about what goes into the design of a thread so on the thread you have a this would be your major diameter okay and then subsequently you would have at the bottom your minor diameter and then roughly down to the center of this bolt or thread under the thread you have your thread diameter think of it as the material average peak to peak to root then you have your crest or peak of your thread and then you have in here this is the thread angle and then you have your pitch so those are all the major things you know of course you also have the back side of the thread which is considered the flank and you would have this would be the unthreaded portion if it the bolt's long enough to warrant not being threaded all the way or the shoulder is another word for it and now when you go to you know discuss what size thread i have you know you talk about this major diameter could be like a quarter inch and then your pitch is what tells you what your thread size is and in pitch relative to a us bolt it would be your major diameter let's say is a quarter inch okay and that would be by in us terms we use threads per inch so that's the pitch number over an inch so how many threads peaks do you get per inch and that would be a common uh coarse thread is a quarter 20 for a quarter inch bolt and this this length right here on that bolt would actually equate 50 thousands okay now in contrast a metric bolt doesn't use threads per inch it uses this number directly so as a comparison an m6 is pretty close to a quarter inch by 1.0 which this would be here 1.0 millimeters okay would give you that pitch and that so that's how a metric bolt is specified and then of course both of them are by whatever length you want okay so for instance let's say i want um a inch and a quarter here and i want 30 millimeters on that one so that's the basics as far as the details that go into the threads and how they're specified out like in a machinist handbook all right so we went through our detail of all the dimensions and such that go into a thread now we're going to venture into making our own thread so when you get a big kit you have of course an array of taps and you have an array of dies and these others are just ways to drive them other than the gauge them itself so if you're doing an od thread on a shaft then you're going to use a die and that die has a lead in chamfer so you can get the thread started and then it also goes into this holder in this fashion holds it on and then turn it on to the shaft now that shaft size is going to be similar in function as far as how we go through and do a tapped hole just the opposite side of things and then also you have a couple different ways to drive taps so this would fit in here you tighten it up and then of course you take the end of the handle stick it in here now you have a t-handle so you can easily twist it in and then of course you get a little more leverage here and again you have this much leverage right until it wants to snap now one of the nice features that this particular kit has you'll notice on this handle on this end you can actually use a socket or a ratchet to drive it so i don't know that it's a 3 8 but look at that so now you can take your ratchet and use that to drive this now if you don't happen to have this i'll tell you what this these work really well also this is more of the common uh style t-handle so it's got two little it's got two angles in it and that just basically grabs that uh square on the end of the tap all right now lastly we can use these specially sockets that will grab hold of the square that's on the end of the tap and it presses in here and now you get a nice drive that will utilize either a quarter or a 3 8 ratchet to come in and then rotate the test so if you have any questions relative to what size this quarter inch bolt is or what thread is you can do it a couple different ways there's this fractional pitch gauge which does exactly what it says if you read through these real close and fine it gives you numbers relative to the different pitch threads and you can see it's the cross section of a thread what you would do is come in here and find one let's say i don't know if it's an 18 or a 20. so i come in and say all right does this match and it's a game of does a square peg fit in a round hole and no it doesn't so now you come to the 20 and look at that it's a dead match now here's the other way you can do it if you have your taps guess what your tap has the exact same profile as that thread gauge does and there it is now let's say you get to the hardware store and you have this in your pocket and you say hey i need four more of these but i don't know what size it is go in the bolt bends that look pretty close to this do the exact same thing line up the threads so after you've determined what size thread you have on your bolt then you're going to come and reference your chart and the point of the chart is it's going to tell you what tap drill size you need for that thread so you'll see i have my chart out and now as i come down from my tap size i scroll down here until i hit quarter 20. now there are two columns on this particular chart one for 60 and one for 75 percent here's the quarter 20 on the 75 here's quarter 20 on the 60. on the 75 it uses a number seven drill bit and on the 60 it uses a number four what that means is one hole is slightly larger than the next so in other words as you tap that you will have call it less engagement so to speak or the peak basically a sloppy or a different tolerancing between the two the standard is using a 75 percent so we will go to our drill index grab a number seven and that's what we'll need so i come over to my drill index and my number drill bits are from one to sixty so starting down here is one and i come down here's that number four for sixty percent and then here's number seven for the 75 percent which is a 201 thousandths drill bit so that's what i want for that engagement on that thread now this is a much larger drill index than maybe you're used to and as i mentioned at the beginning you can buy each individual drill bit separately now what most people are going to be familiar with is the fractional drill bits so half 5 16 7 16 so on and so forth but others may not realize that there are also character drill bits a through z and then again what we've already talked about was the numerical drill bits one through uh 60. but the idea between these other two sets is they fill in the gaps between the fractional so you get into that much smaller decimal placed thousand style sizes okay so now if you're at the hardware store looking for a tap and the corresponding drill bit uh typically they should have your chart on hand and be able to tell you and then also well it's relative to the tap itself on that container it will say drill tap size whatever number seven in this case and then just go to where they have the drill bits grab the drill you need and away you go now the first time around here i'm going to use basically all the hand tools i'll say most people have at their disposal so to start a hole really well you need a center punch a hammer and the reason you use a center punch is so the drill does not walk around the surface it it finds the where you want okay relative to drilling using a hand driller or any drill for that matter the speed at to which you spin the drill bit does make a difference usually the larger the diameter of the drill bit the slower so technically yes i could run this on two and run it wide open but it's going to create a lot of heat and not necessarily cut any better i prefer to use low speed and of course my trigger is variable that way as i come through and break through the back side of the metal that burr in there doesn't catch the drill bit and break the drill bit off on me now i want this to be as square as possible square being perpendicular to this surface so not like this like this like this straight up and down so here we go now i know you thought i was going to drill this without any oil i wasn't but i did need to start to start the hole put a little bit of lube on there here's a good idea as far as starting a tap not a bad idea to start a have a chamfer on the very top of this and the other option if your hole is large enough you can use a deburring tool to come across the top of this and also put a chamfer in it like so because as you see your tap also has a lead into it it doesn't start automatically cutting the full depth of a thread it works its way to that now don't confuse that with a tapered pipe thread where the whole thing is tapered so this diameter down here is smaller than here and that's based on how a tapered pipe thread works not to be confused a little tapping fluid on here and i'm going to start i'm going to use a t-handle that's what i like the best when i can and then we're just going to try to hold it as nice and straight as we possibly can you see it wants to walk around and i am putting pressure down to hold it into the hole because i need it to bite especially starting off so you can see right now i'm not i don't need to back anything off yet and there i have it started now once it started give it a couple pulls and i can start to feel a lot of tension on it so now i'm going to back up and by backing up what i'm doing is i'm clearing the um basically the grinding or the or the cutting of the metal i'm cut taking those chips and then putting them into the flute and then just kind of back and forth like i said there's a i guess a rule of thumb half a turn quarter turn back um don't snap the tap that's my advice so nice and slow let the let the tap do the work you should not especially on a quarter tap you should not be putting a whole lot of torque on this it is very easy to break a tap and taps are hardened they will not drill out so that you'll have a mess so just take your time work it back and forth and if you get to a situation where you need a little more cutting fluid put more cutting fluid on it you can tell and like that i'm all the way through just turn it back all the way out now when you get to the end because you don't want to mess up your lead in i like to hold it here and lift it off so to clarify as i was tapping the hole i said you have to back things out and the point is as this surface of your tap i should say maybe on this side so this surface does all your cutting that edge it creates chips into the flute area and then of course into the threaded area as well of the tap so as you back and turn you're putting it into the flute which is where you want it because that's not the cutting surface and that helps you you know kind of clear the way if that makes sense then the last step i'm going to do is i'm going to take some brake clean and basically spray the oil and chips out of the thread just ever so slightly all right now here's my bolt i'll thread that in here and it's tapped very nicely now obviously i'm going to have maybe a piece of steel or something i'm going to plate in here tighten it down nice and tight all right so there's quarter 20 tapped with all hand tools now let's take our uh piece of scrap metal over here to the drill press and i'll show you how we can drill and tap on the drill press okay so i have my work piece clamped into this big vise and of course my drill bits up in the chuck now one note of caution i do not have this bolted down all right it'll slide everywhere now you can bolt it down if you like clamp it down if you don't have a big vise just clamp your work piece into onto the table and but with the big vise what you can do is just rotate this back have this hit your post get everything lined up with your hole and boom now as i drill this as that torque goes and this bit will catch into this uh material to some extent the vise spins and hits that back and it doesn't go anywhere just a kind of note to self how how to work how to use this all right so again a little little cutting fluid on our spot now the beauty of a drill press obviously that was quicker than using a hand drill and a whole lot less effort and my table is perpendicular to the drill press or better be and that gives me a nice square hole relative to the surface of course as your work piece changes you may or may not be able to fit it in here it's pretty difficult if you're trying to re-tap something on a car and hold the drill pass up in the position where a hand drill gets there but if you have an engine block that's all by itself let's just say like this one then you can put the 389 block on here set the plate way down at the bottom and bring the drill press to it and then drill and tap the back housing as an example so holes cut now very carefully you can use the drill press now to run the tap now ideally this drill press would slow down a little bit more than what it does you typically don't want to tap at speeds much more than a it's really about 20 or 30 rpms this one is going to spin right about 600 so it's a lot more than i need or want and the danger is of course breaking off the the tap now i'm not going to chamfer this hole but what i'm going to show you is that i can come into this right so i'm squared up i'm in the hole but i do need to tighten it so there we go so as quickly as that i have this tapped with the drill press granted the speeds a little bit faster so all i'm doing is modulating the on and off button to get there so it's a little bit slower and it gives me enough torque and spin to push down in there now you're going to ask why don't you have to back back and forth with the machine well the machine's pulling the chips out quick enough and it's getting there and you have that little bit more torque just the way it works all right so that's that piece we can pull this one out actually we'll just slide it out same thing spray a little brake clean to get the chips out of the hole and let's check our deal and voila there we have it okay so what is my bare minimum bare minimum you need some way to put a center punch you need the tap you need a drill and some way to turn this drill bit and then of course you need some way to turn the tap i recommend at least a t-handle but obviously in a bind some way to drive it will work just fine and some sort of oil cutting fluid is the best but motor oil does in a pinch and wd-40 works too now i would highly recommend buying a full kit even though that for all intents purposes a quarter 5 16 and a 3 8 make it pretty dangerous in the car world but invariably it will be one o'clock in the morning on sunday and you broke something off and you need to fix it for monday morning and you don't have the right size this kit as an example is fantastic because it does give you every variation of all the up to a half inch all the variation in thread and then of course up to 12 millimeter on the metric side and it also includes the drill bits that you would need associated to those traps so put this new skill to work and go enjoy your day see ya clean up these tools now they're all dirty you

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 81,754

Rating: 4.9475756 out of 5

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, Hagerty Drivers Club, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, DIY, drilling, tapping, tool, die, cutting oil, taps, tap kit, metric, SAE, standard, thread, pitch, angle, davin reckow, threading

Id: NV4hh4bJxb4

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021