The downside of the hobby - what annoys you?

[Bugatti Fan]

Bad lighting used to be an annoyance.

Daylight LED bulbs in my anglepoise lamps are a great improvement to the old incandescent daylights and what I had to use before.

Edited April 22 by Bugatti Fan

[bobss396]

I got a good LED light at Staples that is quite good and bright.

I have a lighted magnifier I should use more. I build in chaos, often there is no room to set it up.

[Keef]

On 4/16/2025 at 9:11 PM, 1972coronet said:

Then another 75 years to stand-up again, only for this to happen :

I felt this deep in my soul 🤣😂🤣😂

[NOBLNG]

It annoys me how brittle those little PC board drill bits are. They seem to be the best ones for drilling aluminum or brass….but I go through a lot of them! I’m getting better now that I bought a press stand for my rotary tool. I just hope the wife never finds a broken chunk in the carpet with her toe.

[Mark W]

Number one, hands down: loosing that miniature part on the floor!!!

You know exactly where it fell, then after 1/2 hour, you find it 6 feet away.

[peteski]

9 hours ago, NOBLNG said:

It annoys me how brittle those little PC board drill bits are. They seem to be the best ones for drilling aluminum or brass….but I go through a lot of them! I’m getting better now that I bought a press stand for my rotary tool. I just hope the wife never finds a broken chunk in the carpet with her toe.

Unfortunately to work so well they have to be made from very hard material which is brittle.  Those bits were designed for use in precision machines (not hand-drilling) which use them for drilling thousands of holes in PC boards.  Yes, they survive much longer used in a drill press.  I use those bits as much as I can and have plenty of spares. 

Large part of why PC board bits work so well is because they are sharpened to split point.  If you could find very small HSS bits which were sharpened to spit point those would work just as well on softer materials like plastic aluminum or brass as PC board drill bits.  Split point bits do not wander and cut the material better than bits sharpened to a standard point.  I have larger HSS bits with split points and those work very well.

[stitchdup]

On 4/19/2025 at 12:34 PM, bobss396 said:

I bought an intake and carb set on eBay from a popular 3D print source. The carb itself was small, more like 1/32 scale than 1/25. I'll have to dig it out and take a picture.

One of the guys in my club does some printing, he says that scaling is something that can be difficult. 

the problem with scaling is you could have 2 engine blocks from different designers that are the same size in one scale but when you rescale them they end up different. this is due to the original 3d drawing being drawn to different decimal places. Just 0.005 is nothing at 1/24 but when you rescale is that can be another 3 or 4mm as an average block is 1200 layers with that extra 0.005mm on every layer. you wouldn't get if its drawn to 2 decimal places.

[Bugatti Fan]

Those PCB board drill bits were not designed for model making ! They are brittle because they are made from tungsten carbide, one of the hardest metals available. They were designed to be used in PCB board drilling machines for purely vertical motion. Trying to use them by hand will end up with breakages with the slightest side pressure applied.

Selling them as modelling drill bits therefore is questionable.

[johnyrotten]

2 hours ago, Bugatti Fan said:

Selling them as modelling drill bits therefore is questionable.

True, they probably sell a ton of them due to breakage and replacement.  I've broken two, one by simply dropping it to the carpet. While I've gotten better using them, I still have that careful apprehension of what I'm about to do. Some of the cheaper HSS I've come across were not sharpened correctly, if at all. 

[bobss396]

1 hour ago, johnyrotten said:

True, they probably sell a ton of them due to breakage and replacement.  I've broken two, one by simply dropping it to the carpet. While I've gotten better using them, I still have that careful apprehension of what I'm about to do. Some of the cheaper HSS I've come across were not sharpened correctly, if at all. 

I have a mountain of carbide circuit board drills from work that were being thrown out.

Sure they are fragile and the parabolic twist makes them "grabby" in hand held drilling. They are made to be spun fast.

I bought a metric set of HSS drills at a hobby shop, made in Israel. 4 out of the 8 were either ground off center or had a negative rake. But the little case is handy.

I'm blowing through my tiny HSS drill hoard. I recently bought some Walther HSS drills, #71 to #76 and a #65 (.035") which is good for installing 1/32" pins.

I have an index of short screw machine drills I use for bigger holes. Most are HSS, some are cobalt.

[Bugatti Fan]

Pay cheap and you get shoddy.       You can get good quality HSS drill bits from engineers suppliers who don't sell rubbish drill bits as they are supplying to the trade.

Dormer for one is a good make but not cheap, and of course there are other good makes available.    

BUT, quality drill bits will last for ages when used on most model makers materials. wood, aluminium, white metal. zamac and brass that are all a lot softer than steel to drill.

The PCB drills made from tungsten carbide generally have 3.2mm ( 1/8inch) shanks ) so using in a bench drilling machine is generally OK if drilling into a flat surface only.

Edited Monday at 08:18 AM by Bugatti Fan
Corrected info

[Ace-Garageguy]

1 hour ago, Bugatti Fan said:

Pay cheap and you get shoddy.

You can get good quality HSS drill bits from engineers suppliers who don't sell rubbish drill bits as they are supplying to the trade. 

BUT, quality drill bits will last for ages when used on most model makers materials. wood, aluminium, white metal. zamac and brass that are all a lot softer than steel to drill.

Exactly.

I have a couple sets of US-made small number drills that have lasted for decades doing model work, and I've bought cheap sets "just to see" that wouldn't drill a single hole in soft styrene.

[peteski]

2 hours ago, Bugatti Fan said:

The PCB drills made from tungsten carbide generally have 6.3mm ( 1/4 inch) shanks ) so using in a bench drilling machine is generally OK if drilling into a flat surface only.

I have never seen PCB drill bits with such large shanks.  All the miniature  ones I have ever dealt with have 1/8" shafts. A #85 bit on a 6.3mm diameter shank would look sort of strange to me.  I even have PCB bits which are larger than 1/8" but they still have 1/8" shafts.

[johnyrotten]

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I've bought cheap sets "just to see" that wouldn't drill a single hole in soft styrene.

I've done the same, and came to the same realization. Buy once, cry once. I regularly re-grind my larger drills by hand, a very valuable skill to have,  in my opinion, when working with metals. 

[johnyrotten]

5 minutes ago, peteski said:

I have never seen PCB drill bits with such large shanks.  All the miniature  ones I have ever dealt with have 1/8" shafts. A #85 bit on a 6.3mm diameter shank would look sort of strange to me.  I even have PCB bits which are larger than 1/8" but they still have 1/8" shafts.

That's what I have

[Matt Bacon]

Not cheap (but only PCB-bit expensive): I bought some of the Tamiya modelling bits for the smaller sizes. They really are designed for modelling, and the trick is that the standard 3mm diameter shank has a shorter and shorter cutting bit on it as you get into smaller diameters. Let's face it, if you are drilling a 0.2mm or 0.3mm hole on a model, you probably don't need a 15mm deep cut. So the smallest cutting bit is only about 4mm long before the shank, but you are a lot less likely to put lateral stresses on it, or apply high torque to the smallest cross-section. The worst case scenario for the PCB drills is hard to cut plastic at the tip with 15mm of 0.3mm bit between the load and the chuck, which makes the stress at the point where the thin bit meets the thick shank incredibly high, especially combined with bending loads from the pressure on the drill. The Tamiya small-section bits are long enough to go through a 1/48 airplane wing for rigging, or drill a reliable anchor for a 1/24 spark plug wire, and I can't think why you'd need anything much longer. PCB drills are designed to reliably and repeatedly cut through metal and a very hard plastic substrate when mounted in a computer controlled drilling machine with a chuck positioning motion that's accurate to 0.001mm and rock solid in the vertical plane, unlike you or I...

best,

M.

 

[peteski]

Yes, that is the typical PCB drill with a 0.125 (1/8) inch shank.  That's what I'm familiar with.

3 minutes ago, Matt Bacon said:

PCB drills are designed to reliably and repeatedly cut through metal and a very hard plastic substrate when mounted in a computer controlled drilling machine with a chuck positioning motion that's accurate to 0.001mm and rock solid in the vertical plane, unlike you or I...

You are absolutely correct. And they usually rotate at very high speeds when drilling FR4 glass/epoxy composite PC board material (which is abrasive to the tools). Even so, for decades I have been using those PCB drill bits down to #85 (0.28mm) to hand-drill (holding the 1/8" shank between my fingers) holes in plastic. I have broken few over time, but not often. I also use them in my drill press with almost no breakage.

[Bugatti Fan]

Sorry guys, my mistake.  The PCB drills do have 3.2mms ( 1/8th inch ) shanks as pointed out quite rightly  in subsequent posts. Not 1/4 inch.

Should have known better as I have loads of them from when I worked in PCB board manufacture using a dedicated CNC drilling machine  back in the 80's. One bit would drill thousands of holes before needing to be sharpened. In the trade they were not throw away items once they lost their edge. Only after a number of re sharpenings did they get disposed of.

Very small diameter PCB bits are difficult to use by hsnd. Some peop!e get the knack and have very steady hands whilst others do not and suffer more breakages. I will be sticking to my good quality HSS bits as I can use them in a pin vice. I tend to use a very limited range of certain diameters over and over again in my model making so don't buy sets where most of the bits will never get used.

I have corrected my original post to reflect the correct dimension of the shank.

 

Edited Monday at 08:44 AM by Bugatti Fan

[Cool Hand]

Having too many kit's and idea's can be somewhat annoying for me , as im always constantly distracted with new inspiration and changing what im working on.

Sometimes I can remain focused long enough to see a build through to the end. But most times my bench is always in full rotation between projects.

Oh well, at least im never bored 🤣

[johnyrotten]

1 hour ago, Cool Hand said:

But most times my bench is always in full rotation between projects.

I'm still trying to figure out how guys have 3-4 or more going at one time. Any of my back burner kits kinda gnaw at my brain, as I tend to hyper-focus on the task at hand.

[bobss396]

I found some Walther HSS drills on eBay with free shipping. Not cheap, but they are quite good.

[Cool Hand]

8 hours ago, johnyrotten said:

I'm still trying to figure out how guys have 3-4 or more going at one time. Any of my back burner kits kinda gnaw at my brain, as I tend to hyper-focus on the task at hand.

Just have to try and keep very well organized with parts containers. Last count I have 24 bodies painted. Keeping track of that many kits can get a bit hectic 🤣 

[Falcon Ranchero]

9 hours ago, johnyrotten said:

I'm still trying to figure out how guys have 3-4 or more going at one time.

That does seem quite overwhelming; I typically never do more than two; and usually the other one is quite easy; like when I did the '66 T-bird and '57 Chevy in late December, the 'bird was new out the box, but the chev was just a snap-tite that I re-built. And then again with my '57 Chrysler and '59 Lincoln; the '57 was a secondhand that needed to be saved (lotta work) and the Lincoln was another easy snap-tite. Also when I did the '61 Galaxie conversion to a Meteor, I was also working on prepping my '63 Nova (essentially a snap-tite) wagon for a re-paint. And just now with the Monkeemobile, I've been also working on re-doing my '67 Charger after the horrible spray job it recieved in Feb. 2022. I would never do two new out the box kits at once, let alone 3-4, but I can do some fixes on near complete builds while also building one from scratch.

[johnyrotten]

3 minutes ago, Falcon Ranchero said:

I typically never do more than two;

I've got the '34 almost completed, and the vette needs clear and foil. I'm limited with free time, so one at a time seems to work out better as far as getting something done. Plus I work slow and methodical. The '34 has finally gotten on my nerves to the point where I just want it done, told myself no more adding, no more changes. Just finish it.

[johnyrotten]

41 minutes ago, Cool Hand said:

Just have to try and keep very well organized with parts containers. Last count I have 24 bodies painted. Keeping track of that many kits can get a bit hectic 🤣 

You have almost as many bodies painted as I have in my stash. I'm up to around 40 kits.