AccuDrill Drill Guide
By J.R. Bluett
If you need to drill perfectly perpendicular holes you can buy a bench-top drill press for about $50, but they’re tough to carry around. If you need portability as well as perpendicularity, you can try these tiny drill guides for a 90-degree only solution — but sometimes you need something portable and full-featured. For about $35, this drill guide will allow you to drill holes at precise angles, without having to lug a really big tool. Plus, it’ll even work for drilling through steel, so you don’t have to shell out for a magnetic drill.
AccuDrill Drill Guide [General Tools]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?] [What's This?]
June 10th, 2008 at 10:53 am
The AccuDrill guide didn’t get very good ratings on Amazon. Someone suggested the all(or mostly all) metal one from Sears that is $8 cheaper:
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00967173000P
The Sears one does not come with drill bits, but it looks a bit sturdier.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Agree with Gene.
I bought this one at Woodcraft. It is wobbly and gets top heavy with my corded hammer drill.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
The old Sears Portalign (made in San Diego - by a company now long out of business) - was an all metal (diecast base and slide - plus steel rods) that could only drill at 90 degrees. You also had to supply your own chuck - or it was set up to accept a drill motor sans-chuck as the driver on top and the chuck remounted on the bottom.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
The PortAlign was a great tool. My Dad still has one permanently mounted on a drill in his shop.
The best version of this these days is the Wolfcraft. It’s all metal, sturdy and has a stop. I use mine all the time.
http://www.wolfcraft.com/product_detail.cfm?id=80
June 11th, 2008 at 7:56 am
I saw one of those by General. Glad I passed it up…
June 11th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Awesome! Thanks for the Wolcraft link.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:17 am
That wolfcraft looks just like the one from Sears.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
[...] covered jigs for drilling perpendicular holes without a drill press here, here, and here. Though it may not be as versatile, Gladstone’s simple and elegant solution requires no [...]
February 21st, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Well, I’ll be damned. I have one of these Portalign Drill Guides and have used it for some 25 or 26 years. I bought it when I was a weekend warrior making some bookcases with a Skil saw. I couldn’t afford a drill at the time, so I purchased the Portalign. I have long since moved on to a complete shop with table saw, upright drill and so forth, but I still use that drill guide from time to time. No matter how big your upright drill is, you cannot drill a hole in the middle of a large surface, but it’s a piece of cake with a drill guide.
From time to time I look for a better drill guide. I even went so far as to purchase one, but I used it a time or two and then went back to the Portalign (I don’t even remember what the other kind was, I thought that little of it). Just now I have to drill some holes with a 13/16 spade bit and thought it would be nice to have a larger drill than I can use with the Portalign, so I went in search of a drill guide again and ended up here to read about a drill guide that does not get good reviews on Amazon.
To tell you the truth, I’m just going to keep what I have. I have long since hooked it up to a dedicated drill so I wouldn’t have to keep on going through that rather tedious process of removing the chuck and so forth to hook it up to the drill guide when I wanted to use it. You absolutely get better results with an upright drill, but this little guy does a wonderful job whenever I need to use it, and after all these years every part of it is still in excellent condition. Hey, whatever happened to that kind of workmanship? And why in the world did these people go out of business? They had a better mousetrap!