The Spiral Hand Drill
Gerry LeoneDescription
In this video National Model Railroad Association’s Master Model Railroader Gerry Leone discusses the use of a device that makes drilling small holes on a model fast, easy, and accurate. Pin vices are common among modelers for drilling very small holes in models, but Leone has a device that is more accurate and fast than a typical hand held pin vice.
This device is called a spiral hand drill. Yankee screwdrivers would work by pushing the back end of the handle and turning the drill bit down in the front. The spiral hand drill operates on the same principle as this screwdriver. The drill functions by holding down the top of the drill with a thumb and moving the collar up and down the spiral groove which runs down the center of the tool. This will turn the drill bit on the front.
Leone demonstrates the ease and speed of drilling with this device on a thin piece of styrene. The accuracy comes from being able to hold the drill down steadily without any wobbling back and forth. The spiral hand drill can also be used as a standard pin vice tool as well, simply by holding the drill bit and turning. It is especially adept at handling very tiny drill bits, perfect for drilling tiny holes in a model. To learn more tips and techniques from Leone and other expert modelers, visit the Model Railroad Academy website.
Almost every modeler has a pin vice for drilling very small holes into their models, but I've got a pin vice here that's a little bit more accurate than a hand held pin vice, and a lot faster, and it's called a spiral hand drill. If you're old enough to remember Yankee Screwdriver. A Yankee Screwdriver would work by pushing the back end of the handle and it would turn the drill bit down on the front. This works on kind of the same principal. You just simply hold it with your thumb. You run this collar up and down the spiral grove that's down the center of the tool, and it will turn the drill bit on the front, and I'll show you how fast and accurate this is. I'm gonna use a pad here underneath so that I don't mar the surface, but you'll see how quickly this will drill down through and this is about eighty thousandth styrene or perhaps even a tenth. Simply hold it with your thumb there. You hold it nice and vertical and just run this collar up and down and you can see that is cutting right through that styrene very quickly, very easily. You get a lot more accuracy out of a spiral hand drill because you're not wobbling back and forth as you are using this as a pin vice. However, a spiral hand drill can be used as a normal pin vice too, just by holding the drill bit and turning it. Spiral hand drills are especially good when you're using very, very small drill bits, so if you want a nice accurate hole, if you want a hole drilled very quickly, if you're drilling a lot of holes, a spiral hand bit may be the tool that you need.
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