On 20 Nov 2003 11:47 AM, Lpmcatee356 posted the following:

Wow. I'm glad I just started reading this group. What a helpful bunch
here! I'll the the original poster would never have thought about
looking it up.

Not everything that you and I might take for granted is common
knowledge among some of the new builders - or even somewhat
experienced ones. And sometimes those of us that have been doing "it"
for a score+ years forget that not everybody knows the basics.

To answer the original post - the smaller the drill bit the faster you
can/should turn it.

In my experience:

for sheet metal work (drilling #30 holes) the fastest air drill you
can buy is none too fast.

A sharp split point bit and an accurate center-punch help too.

A quick and dirty back of the envelope calculation shows that a 1/8" bit
can be spun in excess of 9000 RPM in aluminum. Higher grade bits can,
of course, be spun faster, but the bottom line is that for drilling
rivet holes in sheet aluminum, no generally available drill is going to
be too fast.

I recently purchased a 6000 rpm Sioux air drill and find it to be
ideally suited for sheet aluminum work. I've worked with standard air
drills at around 2800rpm and I didn't like them as much, although they
work far better than the garden variety of electric drills, which always
seem to be too slow for aluminum, but too fast for steel. My drill
motors are the aforementioned Sioux, and a 1200RPM Porter-Cable electric
which is great for steel but will twist your arm off if you let it dig
in.

----------------------------------------------------
Del Rawlins-
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