Eggbeater drill leads a twisted life

[JimReed@Tallahassee]

Perhaps the drill did not have a twisted life, but its crank sure did. I found this in the boneyard sticking out of a pile of handplanes.



It is an uncommon Yankee 1540 ratchet drill. One turn of the handle turned my smile upside down. The crank was very troubled.





Actually, the camera beautified this twisted handle. It was a mess in many dimensions. I took it off and went to work. A vise was my tool of choice. It took much fiddling and bending to get this thing halfway home.





After vise bending, I took it to the anvil to bring is back home.



Once flattened and happy, the handle was returned to its place of honor and the drill was oiled. Now it runs like a champ. Time to put this little guy back to work. The ratchet stuff looks like fun.

[Bill_Houghton]

Good for you!

In my opinion, that drill is far superior to the Millers-Falls #2 that many people tout.

[Window Guy]

Jim, good job. glad you were able to salvage the handle.


Steve

[Bibliophile 13]

One of these days I'm going to get myself an anvil. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted one for doing stuff like this.

[lilrichard2]

Speaking of a twisted life Jim,

Have you ever encountered an auger bit with a twist such as these? There are no signs of any damage to these two bits other than the twists.







r2

[Phil S.]

Richard-

I have a #4 that looks like that. Not sure how that's done. Mine has both ears folded backwards, but still has a fairly decent point on the screw. Only thing I can figure is a previous user must have hit something pretty hard to torque the bit that way.

Phil

[JimReed@Tallahassee]

My best guess if that they were chucked into a drill press and mayhem ensued. These twist bits were designed for use with hand operated braces. The long length makes them good candidates for over torque damage.

I had access to my dads ww shop at an early age and liked to make projects. One particular project was making lamps from cedar logs I harvested from the yard. Drilling the center hole was a real challenge but I managed to do it twice using a brace and long augers such as these. The trick is to take your time and be lucky enough to hit the middle when drilling blindly from each end. An oversized hole from the bottom will greatly increase your odds.

Making lamps is a common workshop project and these long augers are very tempting--what else can bore a long hole for a lamp? In this case, someone probably tried using the augers in a drill press and the auger got stuck. That would be a fast trip to Torque City. When drill press bits get stuck, the drilled object is forced into motion.

Lucky for me that I was prohibited from using power tools--except for my bandsaw. I am sure I would have broken some fingers with the drill press. Hand tools are very safe when compared to their powered cousins.