61 VIDEO TOOLS FOR DRILLING IN WOOD AND MASONRY

In this video I want to explain to you some of the tools and bits that you can use for drilling as you're making a deck project

Drilling in wood and drilling in masonry. So the least expensive kind of bit that you need to drill holes in wood, large holes in wood, would be something called a spade bit

I mean this is one here. Every hardware store carries these and they seem simple but they do a great job when they're sharp

It's fairly easy to resharpen them as I've explained in another video

But this is the kind of bit that you'd use to drill holes for carriage bolts and leg bolts and things like that

So larger holes, larger than what a regular drill bit could drill

Now this is kind of like a regular bit in that it's a twist bit

It's a half an inch in diameter but it's fairly long. They call this an installer's bit because it's got a little hole in it here

So if you were drilling through a wall and you wanted to pull a wire through you could attach a lead wire onto this after you've drilled it through

and pull it through and then attach that to your cable and pull that through

That's not for deck work of course but that's why this is called an installer's bit

I like these because they're fairly fast and they're longer than usual as well

Now when I have to drill a hole that's very long, maybe through a couple of 6x6s or even larger than that

then I recommend this auger bit. This works on a bit of a different principle

It's slower than some of these other bits but it powers itself through

So if you look here on the tip it's got an angled threaded screw type end

That tip along with the shape of the bit causes it to be self-feeding essentially

You just have to put it on the wood and turn the drill on and it'll pull itself through

It'll also auger the shavings out very well too. This is the ideal kind of bit for big holes that are also deep

Now this final kind of bit is what you'd use for drilling in masonry

So concrete, block, brick, stone. It's a masonry bit and it's not very sharp

These bits need to be sharp if they're going to cut through wood properly but not so the masonry bit

The thing about a masonry bit is that the cutting edge needs to be extremely tough and abrasion resistant

because it's rubbing up against highly abrasive material. So that's what you see here

A bit like this would not do a great job through wood. You can blast through an inch and a half of say ledger board on your way through a brick wall

That would be on your way into a masonry wall. That would be fine. But for regular drilling in wood you need to use something else

But this is what a masonry bit looks like. It spins and the kinds of drills that you'd use this in also have a pounding action

So many times a second it's going back and forth a little bit and it's spinning

And that's what lets a bit like this burrow its way through masonry quite quickly

You can use bits like this in a regular handheld hammer drill which I'm going to show you in a second

Equivalent bits are available for use in larger rotary hammers. And I've explained all about that in other videos as well

But this is for a handheld drill and that's what I want to show you right now

So this is the kind of cordless drill that makes sense for most of the hole boarding operations you'll need to do when you're building a deck

There's some features here I want to show you about in case you want to buy or borrow the right kind

So this is called a cordless drill driver. And the reason... a cordless hammer drill driver actually

And that's because it has three different functions. So it spins just like a regular drill

And when I want to drill in masonry for instance, this is just a regular spinning setting here

That's a little picture of a drill bit. And so it just spins

Full lock up and full power of the drill is constantly transmitted through to the chuck

Now if I turn it here to the hammer position, it's still going to spin

But if I was drilling masonry and pressing against the bit, you'd hear a kind of a buzzing sound

You should be able to hear it even now. See, it didn't do that before

In drilling mode, just spinning. Now if I get it to hammer mode, and that's that pounding action I was telling you about

So it's turning and it's pounding and that's what lets it blast through masonry very well

Now there's an intermediate position here too. And that's the driving position, so driving screws in other words

And when it's in that position, the drill delivers more or less torque depending on the setting of this outer collar here

None of this is unique to Milwaukee. Most drill driver hammer drills are designed the same way

So if I have it set down low... See, the chuck isn't spinning here. It wants to spin

But then when I apply resistance, the torque is limited. So the idea being that if you set this right, you can drive a bunch of screws in to a consistent depth automatically

Because it'll just drive with a certain torque and then the clutch will slip and then that's that

In practice, as I've explained before, an impact driver is a much better tool for driving screws

But it's not essential. This drill will drive screws passively well. It's an 18 volt

18 volt, 20 volt, doesn't really matter. They're all pretty much the same as far as power is concerned

And this has a 2-speed transmission, so to speak. So this is in position 1

So, relative low speed and more torque. This is the kind of setting that I would use if I was using an auger bit, for instance

Or the masonry bit. Now, if I put it into position 2, much faster speed and lower torque

And this number 2 position is what I would use with the spade bits

Because they do need a faster rotation in order to drill through wood

So, that's kind of your basic crash course on drilling for deck construction and the kind of tool that makes sense for that