[Shop-talk] Drilling holes in sheet metal

[Mark Andy]

Howdy,

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Doug Braun wrote:

> Wow! A lot of people with nothing to do on a Friday night except stare 
> at a computer screen!  Thanks for all the quick advice.
>
> I happen to have a decent bi-metal 3/4" hole saw blade, so I'll try that 
> on a piece of scrap.  If the hole its too ugly, I'll go over the weekend 
> to the HF store that just opened a few miles from where I live and buy 
> one of their Unibit knockoffs.
>
> The holes are for mounting braces on the inner rear fenders of my '31 
> ford, and are hidden, so beauty is not critical.

If that's the case, I'd recommend any of the solutions mentioned... Every
time I use a holesaw, I get something bigger than the diameter of the
holesaw though, but not a huge amount so.

I actually just used my HF unibit clone tonight for the very first time 
(first time for any unibit style drill).  It was on some fairly thick 
stuff... Probably around 1/8" thick steel, so not a direct comparison for 
you.

I was quite pleasantly surprised at how well it worked.  It became my new 
favorite way to get bigger holes in stuff like that!

This is the set I got.  On sale right now as well.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=96275

Mark