Sensitive drilling platform

[Ed Weldon]

Additional to Marv's great essay I'd add something he may not be familiar with. In the worlds of scale model builders working in smaller scales below 1:12 the use of pin vises to hand drill holes in the#61 and smaller range has been by far the most common practice for most of the last 70 or more years for model railroaders. This works well in most hard woods from basswood and up as well as soft metals up to hard brass. Lubrication and swarf clearance when working in metals is aided by sticking the drill in a lump of beeswax after mounting in the pin vise and before drilling. Wiping off the beeswax once it fills with swarf is an easy move. I have one of those common #61-80 sets in the round plastic holder and a lump of beeswax the size of a big cherry is stuck down in the middle. Drilling holes by hand this way takes time and patience especially in brass and sticky zinc diecasting alloys. But precise hole location is possible, especially if you work under magnification. However wood species with definable grain makes precise hole location difficult without use of a drill jig of some sort. An example is drilling holes for grab irons on HO scale boxcar models. Something I've yet to try is mounting a #0 center drill in a separate pin vise and use it to spot the hole starting position......... Ed Weldon