Where do you buy a left hand drill bit ?

[timtune]

Anyone else thinking the next question is "how hard is it to drill out a hardened extractor that's broken off?"
I'm scared of those things.....

 

[frekeyguy]

I’m usually very skeptical of anything from Princess Auto but a few weeks ago I had to drill into some relatively thin stainless steel food processing equipment and had burned through about a dozen good quality Dormer high speed steel drill bits.I ran down to Princess Auto and picked up some of their cobalt drill bits and they worked flawlessly, and they were dirt cheap.

I haven't used Cobalt from PA.
But I have used low-end Cobalt from KBC (inexpensive) to drill/wire race bikes, and they worked well.
Stainless is tough on cutting tools, I can understand.

 

[NuggyBuggy]

Update: i was able to get the bolt out ! Used a Neiko Center punch and then used the smallest bit and extractor in the Irwin set. The location of the bolt precluded me from using a tap handle, so I used some channel locks.

I could probably have gone up a step with the drill bit but in retrospect probably good I did not. It turns out that even after placing the Center punch as close to Center as I could, the hole was quite off Center and more over was not true - the angle was off by quite a bit. If I had used a larger bit It just might have ruined my threads.

The bolt was really in a place that made it very hard to be sure I was drilling straight.

Thanks all for the advice !

 

[nobbie48]

Update: i was able to get the bolt out ! Used a Neiko Center punch and then used the smallest bit and extractor in the Irwin set. The location of the bolt precluded me from using a tap handle, so I used some channel locks.

I could probably have gone up a step with the drill bit but in retrospect probably good I did not. It turns out that even after placing the Center punch as close to Center as I could, the hole was quite off Center and more over was not true - the angle was off by quite a bit. If I had used a larger bit It just might have ruined my threads.

The bolt was really in a place that made it very hard to be sure I was drilling straight.

Thanks all for the advice !

Thanks for letting us know. Too often we don't find out what worked best.