When my electric drill stops working will I be able to repair it?
Probably not, though when that day comes I will be very interested
in taking it apart and trying [1]. Instead of fixing the
mechanical bits or even the electronics, it would be easier to
make a pump drill. Even better would be to have a pump drill
already made.
I must admit that I have made a pump drill in the past. At the
time, I was unemployed -- or I'd like to say mini-retired [2]
-- so I was suffering from what I term hyper-insomnia, and I
wanted to be able to work in my garage at weird hours without
disturbing my neighbors. Because of this, my motivation was to
be quiet. And, yes, a pump drill is more quiet than running an
electric drill. I also found the drill really enjoyable to use.
My execution was not perfect, however. I reamed out the hole for
the flywheel, rather than drilling it [3], so the darn thing kept
slipping, and so I tried to deal with it with a series of wedges,
duct tape, glue, bullshit, and trickery to try to keep the thing
working. But once it started having problems, nothing would work
for long. Furthermore, I put the drill bit in at an unacceptable
slant. Interestingly, the pumping motion did much to straighten
the hole that was bored, but it make it pretty difficult to remove
the drill bit after the hole punched through the other side, and
one day I was working to pull the bit out and the thing snapped.
I have been using my electric drill ever since.
But now that my little toy cat project is done, I am working on
several redesigns for the pump drill. For one, I am working on
making sleeves that go over the broom stick and are fastened by a
screw, hopefully allowing me to switch out drill bits as I
prototype, rather than have to cut out a bit of stick, shrinking
my drill over time. Also, one can dream of the day that the
design is worked out and differnt sleves can have different sized
drill bits, if not some kind general purpose chuck. I also have
a bit of board cut out which is quite a bit smaller than the
flywheel, but attached to the stick by a screw from the horizontal
axis. We'll see how long glue can join the flywheel to that board,
along with a better hole (see also footnote 3) and wedge.
[1] And then when I fail, there should be plenty of parts worth
salvaging. Perhaps the chuck, but bearings, switches and maybe even
grease. . . all things which could be worked into toys.
[2] One distinction being that I had money saved up and so was able to
pay my side of the bills the entire time I was not working. I think
that the entire FIRE (Financial Independence/ Retire Early) movement
suffers from a common problem amongst all movements I've ever seen:
too much group think moving toward wishful thinking. I think mini
retirements (take time off and go back to work) or semi-retirement
(working a much reduced amount of hours a weeks -- maybe 20 or that
mythical 4 hour workweek) is better for most people.
[3] Only later did I find out of my grandfather's old spade bits were
about the right size for the hole I needed. I also learned from this
how damn slow spade bits work, and so I have begun the practice of using
smaller drill bits to make a lot of smaller holes, swiss cheese style,
and then use a chisel to take out a lot of the material. This leaves
the spade bit with the job to make the circle accurate, and it
certainly does a better job of it than I can do with any type of rasp.
--
This work is hereby in the public domain.
Do what you want with it.
