Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Drill Jig for Straight Holes

lots of tools available for drilling perpendicular if you are standing up and wood or metal is on a flat surface.

yesterday I was trying to drill a hole on a fire door without removing the door and i made a mess , any jig or tricks you are aware of?

Center punch, sharp drill, start slow, if you want a big hole drill a small pilot hole. And of course see it happen in your minds eye first to anticipate problems.

And measure twice and drill once.

If it's not straight forward I'll lay it out on my CAD program and print a template.

I have one like this that I used when I replaced the wood transom in my aluminum boat.
It made lining up the holes for the motor mount perfect.
https://www.garrettwade.com/portable-drill-guide-jig.html

If you are close to the non hinge edge it's easy to rig something like those electric hand drill presses for a table clamped on...

Harder if the door can move around.

Take a flat piece of 3/4" thick steel, put it in a drill vise, then drill a hole through it with a drill press .003" larger than the drill you're going to use on the job you're doing.

Hold the piece of steel with the hole in it flat against whatever you're drilling, then use the hole in the steel as a guide to drill through.

I'd do it Bristols way

That looks slick

I have that jig and it works great. Bristoe’s method works well also and for one or two holes you can use hardwood instead of steel.

This has been a very informative thread. Thanks.

I have a very similar problem, except in my case, I need to move a hole.......in a walnut Rem 700 stock.

The hole for the front action screw in the stock is out of alignment with the hole in the action by a few 1/100s of an inch. I have pillars coming from PT&G. But I need to figure how to keep the drill from centering on the old hole when I drill oversize for the pillars.

Maybe I can get the machinist at work to do it on his Bridgeport.

My corded drill has a bubble level at the back and on top. Pretty handy if it’s sorta critical.

that looks great , i wish i had it. next time i know what to do.

i was surprised when insurance company approved installing a doggy door on a fire door , but it's done and i got a free burger and a hug.

A drill will always follow an existing hole. You can do it by chucking up a center cutting end mill in a drill press if you can figure out a good way to hold the stock.

Accommodating insurance company. That wasn't Flo, was it?

Persiandog, was you drilling for door hardware?

may be Flo ,I was doing it for a friend and she wanted to install it on the self-close fire door to the garage and then she has another doggy door from garage into the yard !

self closing doors have spring loaded complicated hinge and not simple as regular ones.

removing the spring loaded hinges is impossible , so the choice was to remove everything and she didn't want to do that.
so the only option was to cut the template while the door is attached and i am sure the company made the door for regular thickness door. so it took almost 6 hours to get it done.

in the company installation video it take less than 2 minutes : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88vY3oqmw44

It is.
I actually had to also drill the holes in the new wood transom that needed to line up the holes in the aluminum hull and then line up with an inside bracket.
Using that allowed me to line up the holes in the aluminum hull, drill thru the wood and the holes then lined up with the inside bracket so when I slipped in the bolts they went straight thru with out any problem.

I made a drill bit guide out of a piece of 1 inch square aluminum bar stock to open up the existing holes on my motorcycle block for timecert inserts. I made the jig square with a vertical milling machine then opened up the holes in the block by hand.

Well the right way is to fill, let cure, and redrill.
Short of that, for .03 ( couple is two, few is three, some is four?) You might take a small rat-tail file and work it in the right direction, partially fill and see if you can drillb an appropriately located pilot hole..or use the splinter down the side you want to move away from... but really there are a thousand ways to screw-up and put tension, pressure on the action, which is why there is a right way.....

You can plug the existing hole prior to drilling to keep it from centering on the old hole.