Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions Deep Hole Drilling Setup?

Can anyone share what they have used to drill deep into end grain for wires etc..

We don't mind building something permanent but would like to see some examples. Looking online has brought up some information but not much.

How deep do they have to be? I have a mafell drill stand that would certainly be accurate but perhaps not deep enough. You could probably build something similar using super long bits from a log supply place.

This is a tough one. We've gone through an 8' post, working from both ends.

If I recall correctly (it's been a number of years ago), we leveled the post lengthwise and clamped a leveled sighting board extending out past the end of the post. Had a guy running the drill and aligning the bit side to side by sighting down a chalkline along the posts center and a guy sighting the bit's alignment with the sighting board and saying "up a bit, down, down, good" and so forth.

It worked but and was low tech, but if I had a lot of them to do, I'd be looking to make it a one man job.

hello everyone tonight

This is an old problem solved a long time ago

Boring holes endwise through logs to produce pump logs for use in dug wells

The logs were stationary, and long augers run then by steam power on moving frameworks slowly moved forward and back to clean out the shavings, they could drill through up to 12 foot long logs

They used pod augers especially adapted to bore into the end grain, and held the shavings as the pods were withdrew.

These pods had spiralled ends rather than a thread, and worked really well going into the end grain

The pods were about 12 inches long and open on the side, of really hard steel about 2 inches in diameter

the pods came on sets and could increase the bore sizes to 4" for the top logs that held the sucker for lifting the water using a simple setup

I hope this information may give you guys some background information on drilling holes endwise in logs, maybe you can adapt something similar using a modern drill attached to long tool steel shank

A temporary setup in a shop could hold and guide the long drill, I am sure you could come up with something that would suffice

NH