Things I learned today...

[hudebnik]

When you drill a hole in a piece of hardwood whose surface is at an acute angle to the grain, the drill "walks" down-grain from where you started it. And to the right of that direction (I guess because of the clockwise spin of the drill bit).

Any woodworkers out there, are there standard best practices for how to adjust a drill-hole that's in slightly the wrong place? (The location really needs to be correct, since I'm putting pegs in the holes to align two pieces of wood and glue them together.)

Comments

[metahacker]

1. Fill the old hole with wood. My dad used to use toothpicks plus wood glue.
2. Let it dry/cure.
3. Drill hole in right spot, possibly using a clamped block of wood or other device to prevent wandering.

[metahacker]

You could also use a cut-off dowel to fill the hole, if you had a spare...

[hudebnik]

Yes, I have the dowels I planned to use to peg these things together, and if I run out, it's easy to get more.

The holes are off by at most 1/8" from where they belong, so it's frustrating to have to fill and re-drill them, but whatever works. Among other things, if the new center is in a dowel rather than in the off-grain surface, it'll be well underway before the drill starts to walk sideways. Maybe.