Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
I went in all happy to drill some nice, straight, and centered holes in a few pieces of wooden rod. But it turned out the holes didn’t come out centered on the ends of the short pieces I cut from a wooden rod, nor straight. I suppose the 6 mm drill bit is flexible enough that the hard grain of the pine wood deflects it. I even tried drilling the wood with a 6 mm spade bit, but ran into the same problem. Luckily, there’s always a good woodworking trick to fix these things. I found that I first needed to mark the centers on both end grains of all the round wooden pieces. Then, carefully and by hand, I made a well-centered starter hole at each mark, only a couple of millimeters deep. The trick here is to keep an eye on how the hole develops and correct it by tilting the drill bit one way or the other as needed. Once the starter holes are done, now the drill press does let me make the blind holes well centered on the end grain on each side.
The horizontal router table I made with those pieces:
youtu.be/oiPB7w2MgSY
The first video in the series where I make a drilling jig to drill the end grain of some wood rods:
youtu.be/8psfvdEh0Q8
The shelving unit I made with the wood rods:
youtu.be/6A9gjpx58RQ
Subscribe and hit the bell :)
I went in all happy to drill some nice, straight, and centered holes in a few pieces of wooden rod. But it turned out the holes didn’t come out centered on the ends of the short pieces I cut from a wooden rod, nor straight. I suppose the 6 mm drill bit is flexible enough that the hard grain of the pine wood deflects it. I even tried drilling the wood with a 6 mm spade bit, but ran into the same problem. Luckily, there’s always a good woodworking trick to fix these things. I found that I first needed to mark the centers on both end grains of all the round wooden pieces. Then, carefully and by hand, I made a well-centered starter hole at each mark, only a couple of millimeters deep. The trick here is to keep an eye on how the hole develops and correct it by tilting the drill bit one way or the other as needed. Once the starter holes are done, now the drill press does let me make the blind holes well centered on the end grain on each side.
The horizontal router table I made with those pieces:
youtu.be/oiPB7w2MgSY
The first video in the series where I make a drilling jig to drill the end grain of some wood rods:
youtu.be/8psfvdEh0Q8
The shelving unit I made with the wood rods:
youtu.be/6A9gjpx58RQ
Subscribe and hit the bell :)
