Fillet Knife

Excellent design and high quality work in the knife and photography:) Perfect stone to go with the knife.
Beautiful:)

I know I sound like a broken record by now but I REALLY mean it when I say Thank You for all your kind and inspiring comments!


Ken,
It can be tough to drill slabs without having them crack on you and I've had my share of it.

I don't use the fast speeds that seem to be the norm for drilling but rather use the slowest speed on my drill press which is about 250 RPM's. If it went slower I would even go slower with the speed but,,,,,,

Having the slab and the surface it sits on for drilling is a MUST.When I say flat I MEAN as flat as you can possibly get the 2 surfaces.Even something smaller then a tiny,tiny grain of drilling residue between the slab and the surface it's sitting on can and in most cases will crack the slab.

I found that trying to hold the slab while drilling it is fruitless and only causes more problems.

I came up with a "thingy" to hold the slabs in just about any position necessary for drilling any size hole or even part of a hole.









I found a real pretty crack in the handles and tried to heal them with Opticon but,,,,,





Like you said,,,,It's a LOT harder to do then most people think!!

connrock

I fill the area with water and a cutting agent to just over the slab and use the up and down feed method.

With the slab being held down (after hand lapping flat) solid to the ceramic tile (which I had lapped flat) and using the slow speed ,the only times I've ever cracked slabs is when they had a crack in them to begin with and I couldn't or didn't see them before hand.

I have diamond core drill ranging from about 4mm-30mm,,maybe 35mm and they work very well for me.

I use this same method an set-up for drilling the smaller holes as well down to 1mm.

connrock