Make-shift Drill

e preceding article was about the library of articles.  Here is a short one from a Peace Corps manual on how to create a make-shift drill.

A drill

Sometimes you may need to make a small hole through a piece of wood. The following tool will help you do this.

Fig. 9

You will need these materials to make the drill:

One nail, 8 cm long

One piece of wood such as a branch of a tree

The wood should be very hard

Length: about 12 cm

Thickness: between 10 and 12 cm (See page 1 for instructions on measuring the thickness.)

Hammer

he first step is to flatten the point of the nail as you did when making the chisel. Hammer the point until flattened as shown in the diagram.

Fig.10

The flattened point is then hammered into the center of the end of the piece of wood as shown in the following diagram. Cut the head off the nail with a hacksaw blade. This exposed end of the nail is hammered until it is flattened.

Nail with head off before being flattened:

Fig.11

Nail after being hammered:

Fig.12

Finally, sharpen the end using a hard stone, or by rubbing it on a hard cement floor until the point looks like this:

Fig.13

The same procedure can be used to make drills of various sizes, using different sized nails. When using large nails, make sure the wood for the handle is thick enough in diameter so that it will not crack or split when the drill is being used.

To use the drill, grasp the butt of the handle with the palm of the hand as shown in the diagram. Press down as you twist the nail back and forth through the wood.

Fig.14

The drill also can be used to prepare a piece of wood for a nail. If a hole is made in a piece of wood before a nail is pounded into it, the wood will be less likely to split. Choose a drill which will make a hole that is slightly smaller in diameter than the nail that you want to use. Drill the hole not quite through the other end. When joining two pieces of wood, do this for both pieces. Then bang the nail through the holes in the two pieces.