More Eggbeater bits

One advantage of spending a week at the London International Woodworking Festival was the number of woodworkers I knew coming. In my never ending quest to find the perfect drill bit for egg-beaters, I made a few requests, and a bunch of people brought along their favourite bits so I could test them all. Many thanks to Scott Anderson, Ric Archibald and Mattias Hallin for bringing bits along for me to test.

I’ll save everyone a bit of time. The Star-M 601 bits are still the clear winner.

I brought my Egg-Beater drill and a chunk of my horror pine along. Friday evening I had a little spare time and put all the bits through their paces. Each bit got 2 holes drilled going straight in, and two with the bit run in reverse first to give spurs/wings more of a chance to do their thing.

Bear in mind, just because a bit does badly in this test, that does not make it a bad drill bit. These bits are all designed for use in powered drills running at far higher speeds, and speed changes everything. To the extent that any of these bits work well in exceptionally soft splintery pine at low speed, its a happy accident.

Here are the results bit by bit.

Bosch DIY range. Probably the second worst bit, ragged holes, lot of fibres lifted.

Bosch Pro range. Second only to the Star-M bits. Not what I would call a clean hole, but no large fibres lifted, just a bit ragged.

Fisch GL70. When run backwards before drilling, these beat everything but the Star-M, when you plunge straight in, they rip up fibres. You could argue these beat the Bosch Pro as long as you remember to run em backwards first.

Fisch GL 61. Pretty nasty when run straight in. A fairly poor edge when run backwards first.

Famag HSS. The worst bit in the batch. Absolute horror show holes no matter what you do. Reversing makes no difference.

Lee Valley Brad Points. I had high hopes for these. I’ve had many people reach out to tell me these are what I should try. Unfortunately, that is just not the case. Second worst bits in the batch. Ragged holes, major tear out. Only the Famag did worse.

Twist bit. Just for giggles, we tried a plane old twist bit. No spurs or wings. Not a very good result, but beats the Famag.

So thats it for drill bit testing for a while. Just about everything I’ve been recommended has been tried. I wont be writing about egg-beaters and bits here again unless I find something that actually beats the Star-M.

Egg Beater Bits

The results, from top to bottom. Star-M 601, Bosch DIY, Bosch Pro, Fisch G70, Fisch G61, Famag, Lee Valley Brad Points, Twist Bit. The left two holes for each bit are straight in. The right two are after a few revolutions backwards.

Egg Beater Bits