Now here’s a good idea — integrate a ball bearing into a drill bit stop. When the stop hits the work piece, the bearing will stop and allow the bit to keep spinning: no marring, scratching, or burning from the spinning stop. It’s not a new idea: the Forstner Depth Stop we covered previously uses this, and now so does FastCap with its new Layout Drill Bit for drilling shelf pins for European-style adjustable shelving.
To adjust the depth of the stop, you loosen a set screw with an Allen wrench. Sounds just like a collar stop, doesn’t it? In my opinion, they really missed the boat on this one; rather than selling such a limited-use bit, they should integrate this technology into a set of collar stops.
The Layout Drill Bit will only be available in 5mm and 1/4″ sizes.
Layout Drill Bit [FastCap]
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5 Responses to Drill Bit With a Ball Bearing Stop
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Collar stops… like this? http://woodworker.com/18-id-slipstop-collar-mssu-908-295.asp
They’ve been around for awhile.
Thanks for the info BC,
I had a hard time believing that somebody hadn’t thought of them, but for all I tried I couldn’t find any.
If they are supposed to prevent marring and scorching.. What’s the tape with the crosshairs for?
@Thomas:
See this post:
http://toolmonger.com/2008/05/27/preview-fastcap-layout-tape/
Or get it directly from the horse mouth:
http://www.fastcap.com/products.aspx?id=3896
Make that horse’s mouth — leave it to me to screw up such a long lived phrase.