faster hand drilling

Quoting Dan’s best points:

Hammer should be 24 oz-ish

Stick to factory sharp 2 flute carbide SDS bits.

The biggest variable is you. Keep pounding and hit hard. 

If you find you can't keep going, slow your cadence and focus on indexing and hard hitting.

Not indexing wastes a lot of time and work, the second strike in one position is mostly wasted.

People have hand drilling competitions.

Dans post is obviously pretty spot on, but we don’t all have the money or access to a machine shop and all that to set up the perfect scenario, so some improvisation is more than likely a warranted necessity.

I’ve hand drilled probably more than a thousand bolts on lead in a sometimes precarious position on various degrees of “slab” on a myriad of different surfaces and stone types and all that.

A good HSS handle is hard to come by. eBay is probably your friend there, but I’ve found it easier to just go with what’s easy to acquire. I have a RocPec and find it works well enough. The key is to get the shortest SDS bits you can find. In 1/4 inch you can get 3in chisel bits. They work way better than the standard 6in ones. I’ve found that 1/4in bolts really aren’t worth it though. If drilling in something hard like granite or basalt, 3/8 x 2-1/4 drills almost as fast as a 2in split shaft.

Anyway, all the bullshit aside, get a Petzl drill. Buy chisel tip bits for whatever size bolt you’re drilling. The X tip ones are shit for hand drilling. Don’t care what anyone says, they’re crap. Get a silicon carbide wheel or (green wheel) on your grinder. Follow the factory taper and just sharpen them up. Do not over heat which is easy to do. 5 seconds and quench. No longer. Maybe even 3 seconds. Over heating and the tip will cause it to shatter for sure on the worst stance over the worst runnout ever. Guaranteed! Ask how I know! I like the BD hammer. The first one lasted 1000 bolts. Got a D5 (or Dammer?) and it’s shit. Heavy, un-balanced wobbly head after 50 or so bolts etc.. Don’t know about other hammers, don’t care to find out either. BD hammer is a solid choice.

So in a nutshell, go SDS. Sharpen your chisel tips, don’t use a heavy hammer and go with the shortest bolt you can get away with. I can drill a 3/8 x 2-1/4 bolt in about 5 minutes with that setup. Or at least I could before my arthritic toes forced me to accept the devil called M18 into my life.

Not the best picture, or the best grind job, but basically you want to expand on the factory angles a bit and just touch them up from China sharp to actually sharp.

P.S. Those bits are quite a bit used and in need of a touch up, but you get the idea. 

Ball-pein hammers swing beautifully.

Good advice from Salamanizer Ski. 

I like the Makita 3/8" bits which I find on Ebay in boxes of 25 for as little as $50. There is one box available right now for $64 with free shipping. search for Makita D-00929, photo below.

Shorter drill are better and the usual 6-1/4" 3/8" drill is too long. In the A-taper days shorter bits were common, see photo below.

Shorter 10mm bits are available but not common in the USA. 10mm bits (0.402"-0.411") are slightly larger diameter than 3/8" bits (0.390"-0.398") but can be ground down on a green grinding wheel. See photo below.

I’ve got an old Rawl taper style drill handle, drift, and a few bits. Don’t know where all the other bits I had got to. I used this things years ago putting up routes in Canyonlands and a few bolts on new routes in the Winds. I don’t see myself doing any hand drilling in my waning years so if someone can put it to use drop me a pm.
I cut about an inch off the handle to lighten it a bit so if you have huge mitts it might not be for you. 

Dan Merrick wrote:

Shorter 10mm bits are available but not common in the USA. 10mm bits (0.402"-0.411") are slightly larger diameter than 3/8" bits (0.390"-0.398") but can be ground down on a green grinding wheel. See photo below.

Oh! I need this in my life…!!!

Salamanizer Ski wrote:

....

So in a nutshell, go SDS. Sharpen your chisel tips, don’t use a heavy hammer and go with the shortest bolt you can get away with. I can drill a 3/8 x 2-1/4 bolt in about 5 minutes with that setup. Or at least I could before my arthritic toes forced me to accept the devil called M18 into my life.

Wow, that is fast. If one happens to be a good deal slower, say 20 minutes, due perhaps to general weakness (not technique), exhaustion, or due to particularly hard rock, then I wonder if the following would help speed things up: 

1) Have two hand drills set up, one with 1/4" bit, one with a 3/8". 

2) Drill the 1/4" to the desired depth (or a bit shallower) 

3) Follow up in the same hole with the 3/8". 

Anybody test this out?

I've hand drilled in the alpine more than most and a lot less than some (including most posters on this thread) but I'm convinced that 5/16"-8mm drill bits are much faster than either 1/4" or 3/8".  Significantly stiffer than 1/4" bits but less mass to remove than 3/8".   Its also much easier to find short SDS bits in this diameter than 3/8".  The bigger issue was finding an appropriate bolt.  The Raumer 8mm are not recommended in granite and in my limited testing struggled to snug up.   Hownot2 now carries a stainless double wedge 8mm x 60mm bolt that seems to work great.  IMO this is the only thing I will be hand drilling on granite far from the road.

Lappas 8mm wedge bolts

Jon Nelson wrote:

Wow, that is fast. If one happens to be a good deal slower, say 20 minutes, due perhaps to general weakness (not technique), exhaustion, or due to particularly hard rock, then I wonder if the following would help speed things up: 

1) Have two hand drills set up, one with 1/4" bit, one with a 3/8". 

2) Drill the 1/4" to the desired depth (or a bit shallower) 

3) Follow up in the same hole with the 3/8". 

Anybody test this out?

This is a terrible idea. For one, 1/4in doesn’t drill much faster than 3/8. It’s really only faster because you have to remove less material. Following up to remove the rest with 3/8 defeats that. And two, drilling out a 1/4 in hole with 3/8 can (not always) be a PITA. The bit tends to bind easily in the hole on certain types of rock. Having drilled out hundreds of old 1/4 bolts to replace them, I’ve found that it’s really the softer, or grainy type rocks that are the worst. Rhyolite, gritty/pebbly sandstone etc and not granites or basalts. Either way, it’s slower.

The real key to fast drilling is sufficient amounts of fear. Stand on a greasy turd, in the middle of august with a strong headwind. You’ll be drillin’ fast as Fuk my boy! 

Everyone loves standing on a greasy turd!

My old school hand drill is to narrow to fit the butt end of SDS drill bits. Any recommendation for non SDS bits?

Jon Nelson wrote:

Wow, that is fast. If one happens to be a good deal slower, say 20 minutes, due perhaps to general weakness (not technique), exhaustion, or due to particularly hard rock, then I wonder if the following would help speed things up: 

1) Have two hand drills set up, one with 1/4" bit, one with a 3/8". 

2) Drill the 1/4" to the desired depth (or a bit shallower) 

3) Follow up in the same hole with the 3/8". 

Anybody test this out?

I have tried this not with 1/4" but with 5/16". One time I accidentally drilled a 5/16" hole (8mm). Thankfully I had a spare bit on me that was the correct size, 3/8".  I tried to drill out the hole to 3/8", but the bit got aggressively stuck with every hammer hit. I had to start over and drill a new hole. This was in hard granite.

This might work better if you start with 1/4" instead of 5/16".

Lots of great advice and more actual testing and research than I’ve ever bothered to do.  I use a petzl rocpec and a BD hammer.  And I have gone back and forth between 2 and 4 cutter bits without ever noticing a difference.  

The one thing I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread and as far as I can tell the easiest way to get faster is to learn to swing with your non dominate hand.  When I was actually hand drilling a lot, I would  probably swing 60/40 between my dominate and non-dominate hand.  I could place a bolt without ever really having to stop swinging.  I’d just switch hands.  In an ideal stance I’d average 10-12min for a 3/8” X 2-1/4” in Valley granite.  

And as a reminder to all new hand drillers, use hearing protection!  I’m suffering from some hearing loss and I partially contribute it to all the hand drilling I’ve done. 

Mikey Schaefer wrote:

Lots of great advice and more actual testing and research than I’ve ever bothered to do.  I use 

petzl rocpec and a BD hammer.  And I have gone back and forth between 2 and 4 cutter bits without ever noticing a difference.  

The one thing I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread and as far as I can tell the easiest way to get faster is to learn to swing with your non dominate hand.  When I was actually hand drilling a lot, I would  probably swing 60/40 between my dominate and non-dominate hand.  I could place a bolt without ever really having to stop swinging.  I’d just switch hands.  In an ideal stance I’d average 10-12min for a 3/8” X 2-1/4” in Valley granite.  

And as a reminder to all new hand drillers, use hearing protection!  I’m suffering from some hearing loss and I partially contribute it to all the hand drilling I’ve done. 

Definitely wear hearing protection! I have tinnitus primarily in my left ear, makes sense with lots of right handed hand drilling.

I also swap hands while hand drilling, but it's not something I ever do on a dicy stance, only good stances!

Like Mikey, I haven't noticed much difference between SDS 2-cutter or 4-cutter (at least in granite) - except when enlarging 1/4" holes to 3/8" where the 4-cutter don't bind as much.

I have 1/4" (actually 17/64") HSS bits that I sharpened, those definitely drill faster than SDS, but have a lot of downsides - pain to make, fragile (requiring good technique), only one bolt per bit (before sharpening again), and of course you need a Hurricane drill with the correct size collet. I also made a couple 3/8" ones, but those don't seem faster than SDS and also bind on the dust pretty easily.

Hi again,

Got my install time down to 36 min per bolt for a 3/8 x 3" wedge bolt. Improvement, but still not great it sounds like. Where I'm climbing, the rock is quite hard where it's good though there is a fair bit of choss to navigate. Any strong reason not to instead use 2 1/4" wedge bolts assuming the rock is pinging when tapped on with a hammer?

Jon.R wrote:

 Any strong reason not to instead use 2 1/4" wedge bolts assuming the rock is pinging when tapped on with a hammer?

Probably not. What type of rock is it? Is it prone conchoidal fracturing? 

Salamanizer Ski wrote:

Probably not. What type of rock is it? Is it prone conchoidal fracturing? 

It's a banded gneiss. I don't think it is prone to conchoidal fracturing, but not sure how I would exactly tell. I'm assuming you mean while drilling...I've only drilled 4 holes at this point but haven't noticed the rock breaking off in chunks or anything like that.

It’s a judgment call, I haven’t seen the rock, touched it, know its characteristics etc. You’re probably good. Gneiss tends to be pretty hard, coarse grained rock high in quartz. If it’s got soft spots, blocky, breaks out in chunks or plates easily, I would probably avoid wedge bolts all together and might even opt for something longer than 3”. If it’s hard like quartz, pings when you tap it with a hammer and isn’t all fractured, you’re probably good.