Drilling a larger hole in a washer

[Oldnek]

Does anyone have any ideas or tips how you can securely hold washer that needs a larger hole drilled into them, With-out damaging the washer itself.
I don't have a Lathe!
On smaller hole sizes like 5/16, my Snap on spot weld clamps work great, but larger sizes won't go.
The bench vice marks and sometimes the drill bit will rip the washer right out, marking it to the un-usable stage.

Any Suggestions?
Cheers John

[KAD]

Take a block of wood drill a hole into it just smaller than the washer outer diameter.
Then cut the block in half strait through the middle of the hole, now get two strips of sandpaper and glue them to the blocks to line the half holes.

Use these blocks to hold round objects in a vise without marring the outer edges.

You can also make multiple holes in the block of wood and line them all with sandpaper the same way this allows you to hold multiple size washers or shafts with only one block.


I use a small strip of duct tape to keep them attached to the vise, I tried cutting ledges and such but ended up just using duct tape and it worked well enough for how many times I use them.


(Just my thoughts, not in any way to infer that this is the only way to do it...nor that I'm right or smart or disagree with anyone else's way of doing things.)

[tbody321]

take a wooden dowel that is slightly larger, place in vice and press washer against dowel..then tighten vise, the dowel deforms and allows vise to grab washer.... dowel prevents washer from moving...
works for me

[crystallographic]

Originally Posted by Oldnek

Does anyone have any ideas or tips how you can securely hold washer that needs a larger hole drilled into them, With-out damaging the washer itself.
I don't have a Lathe!
On smaller hole sizes like 5/16, my Snap on spot weld clamps work great, but larger sizes won't go.
The bench vice marks and sometimes the drill bit will rip the washer right out, marking it to the un-usable stage.

Any Suggestions?
Cheers John

Since I sometimes have to enlarge holes in hardened washers, I don't set up to drill them. I have copper and brass jaw covers for my bench vise so the washers hold tightly on one edge while I use my ancient 25k rpm die grinder and a variety of carbide burrs to enlarge the holes to the scribe lines. I don't even think about it any more - even on thick large hard washers.

Where the hole is large and the washer is small I only do one side of the hole and re-set the washer to do the other side.

[bobadame]

You could tac weld it to a plate in a couple of spots. Center it under the spindle, clamp it Jed, drill it then grind it away from the plate.

[Pokie]

When the hole needs to be just a bit larger, I'll pinch the washer in the vise and use a tapered reamer from both sides to open it up. The nasty part about using a drill bit is if the hole isn't much bigger, the drill bit will bite and tear it out of the vise. When the hole size is close, a reamer is your best bet, at least that works for me.

[JimRussell]

on the top of your vise jaws drill 4 small equally spaced holes - 2 on each jaw. Now put some drill rod in the holes. The washer will be held by the drill rod on it's outer edge and the top of the jaws keep the washer level.

I hope you can visualize this.

[Ranchero50]

Just sandwich them between two pieces of scrap plywood. There are several variation on this theme depending on how many and how accurate you need to be.

The most accurate method is to clamp the bottom sheet to your drill press and to spot drill it half the thickness of your washer with a bit that is the same diameter as the OD of your washer. Then set your washer in the hole, screw on the top piece of wood and drill through it to make your larger hole.

You can go deeper with the OD drill if you have a stack of washers to drill out but it takes more pressure to keep them from turning in the stack.

Hope this helps.

[Marty Comstock]

find yerself a well used 6 jaw chuck for bench mounting purposes. I have a couple that I use for knockaround stuff like this, they are lifesavers.

Marty

[60 convert]

Another thing might be to clamp it like previous and use a step drill.