Drilling Tips

Home improvement expert Danny Lipford gives you tips on how to drill shallow holes for shelves or walls.

Danny: Well Joe, it looks like shelf building time here. Joe: Yeah, that’s right Danny. I had this 1 x 10 and I’m drilling hole for an adjustable shell. Now the challenge is to first of all not drill completely through the pit but you also want the hole is all exactly the same depth. And what I did is I just took a piece of masking tape and I just wrap it around a bit and this whole tape flag helps blow away the dust as you’re drilling down. And so as you’re drilling when you see the clear wood surface, the clean wood surface and you stop drilling and then every hole will be exactly the same depth. Danny: Now I can see where this would work for a small number of holes like what you’re drilling here but if you’re really drilling a lot of holes? Joe: Well, eventually the masking tape will tear or get ripped off completely and so here’s another method. We can take a wooden doll in this case it’s just a short piece of 1 x 1and we’ll drill a hole through the middle and you leave the bits sticking out the depths of the hole and then you just set it down and you drill right into the wood without any fear of drilling too deeply. Danny: Okay, great. Let me give it a try here. Yeah, that worked great. Joe: The other advanatge of this is the iss that you can hold on for the driller guide and keep the drilled right on the mark. Danny: And I could see it would also be beneficial to use this method if you’re drilling on a vetical surface like a wall, where you’re drilling a lot of holes you could just go down and really have a lot of control on. Joe: Right. Because the masking tape flag won’t work on a vertical surface of course, because the dust is falling down it doesn’t have anything to brush away.