Need an affordable drill and tap kit!

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Looking to start drilling and tapping some guns. Im going to be using a hand drill and center punch and vice or gun vice.

I would like to find an affordable kit at a local hardware store ( canadian tire, princess auto, ext ) or somewhere online like amazon with free shipping. Anyone got recommendations?

Price is key for this mission as I won't be doing many expensive guns ( sks and mosins )....Could I just get something with thread size is a 6-48 with the tap drill being a #31????
 
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First I would buy a fairly decent drill press. Can be had for you 200 -200 at local used tool shops. The press is going to keep everything square when you drill and that is very important when tapping small holes like #10 and smaller.
Also it lets you set the depth,very important and hard to manage witha handdrill.
You can hand tap but use the chuck to manually start the tap so it starts straight, then finish by hand.
Later you can get a tapping attachment for the press.
 
Any industrial supply house will have the taps and appropriate number sized drills. KBC, etc. Brownells has a fine selection.
What you are proposing - freehanding with an electric drill - is an invitation to disaster. Lots of bubba'd guns out there with crooked, misaligned, badly spaced holes. You get one chance to do a hole properly.
 
I found a mastercraft drill press for 125$ locally so I may try that out. Not much experience with a drill press but like anything ill figure it out. Just gotta make sure the women at home doesn't notice the new mess maker I buy. She wont be impressed considering I will be doing all my work indoors in the designated indoor " gun room ".
 
In addition to the drill press, you will need a way of holding the work correctly oriented and aligned on the drill press table.
Drilling a true hole into something with a curved surface doesn't allow any margin for error.
I've drilled a lot of holes in various guns, and about the only jobs I would consider doing in the manner you are suggesting is something like installing a receiver sight base on a flat receiver. Carefully position the sight. Mark one hole. Drill and tap that one hole. Install the sight base using the first hole. Make sure it is correctly aligned. Mark the second hole. Remove the base and drill and tap the second hole. Cross your fingers and install the sight, hoping that the spacing is exact, and that the sight isn't tipped.
I use a Forster jig. If properly set up, holes are correct. If the setup isn't correct, the job can still be messed up.
 
Since you are only buying a few taps/ drills I would buy as high quality as you can find. Master craft or princess auto is inviting disaster and heartache for you when one snaps off.
 
Do Canadian Tire or Princess Auto even sell 6-48, 8-40 taps and corresponding numbered drills?

Think this is from Brownells Gunsmiths Kinks. Sooner or later, you are going to break a tap in a hole. Seems to be usually in a blind hole, but not necessarily. If it comes to it, a high carbon steel tap can be broken with a punch, to get the pieces out. High speed steel on the other hand, is very tough, and won't shatter. Harder to remove. Broken tap extractors might or might to work, and there are two three and four flute taps, and you would need one for each type. Sharp, high quality taps are a sound investment. There are shops that use a new tap for every customer's job. A tap is cheap, compared with the time and effort of removing a broken tap.

Also, use a good cutting fluid.
 
new210/22 said:
Since you are only buying a few taps/ drills I would buy as high quality as you can find. Master craft or princess auto is inviting disaster and heartache for you when one snaps off.
Click to expand...

No worries there, as they don't sell the tap sizes that are required to tap for sight or scope mount screws.

This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, esp. the hand drill idea.

Gun mount screws are typically finer pitches than hardware screws, so the tolerance for oversize holes is not there. They also generally are shallow holes, tapped all the way to the bottom, another place where the margin for errors is reduced.

If you do not have a Brownell's catalog, order one. Lots of good info in there if you understand what you read.

I will suggest that you stick to carbon steel taps until you get really familiar with the feel for hitting the bottom of the hole without breaking off the tap. Carbon steel tap parts can be softened with heat, and then removed with regular tools, as opposed to having to spend an hour nibbling it out with carbide dental burrs.

Cheers
Trev
 
tiriaq said:
Do Canadian Tire or Princess Auto even sell 6-48, 8-40 taps and corresponding numbered drills?

Think this is from Brownells Gunsmiths Kinks. Sooner or later, you are going to break a tap in a hole. Seems to be usually in a blind hole, but not necessarily. If it comes to it, a high carbon steel tap can be broken with a punch, to get the pieces out. High speed steel on the other hand, is very tough, and won't shatter. Harder to remove. Broken tap extractors might or might to work, and there are two three and four flute taps, and you would need one for each type. Sharp, high quality taps are a sound investment. There are shops that use a new tap for every customer's job. A tap is cheap, compared with the time and effort of removing a broken tap.

Also, use a good cutting fluid.
Click to expand...

I have not found 6-48 or 8-40 taps at any can tire or big box. They are more a specific size and not used as frequently as say 10-32 or 10-24 8-32 etc. I checked a few places and no go. We have multiple large tap sets at work with a wide variety of sizes and none if those have them either. I was told once by someone who knows more about guns than I do that they are a fine thread and not usually included and can be purchased individually and was told to hit up a place with a good supply of gun smithing tools

Rapid tap is a must and don't try to thread the hole in one shot. Do a couple remove and get rid if excess material. That material will bind in a small tap and snappo. Your 5 minute job becomes slightly longer and more frustrating

Stay away from a cordless free hand. It works in steel where being off a bit doesn't matter and for that matter you can Chuck up the tap as well and tap with drill as well but in this situation a press is only option like the above guys said
 
It won't be long and you will be posting about broken taps and their removal as well as stripped threads.
An industrial supply house can supply taper and bottom taps that are required but drilling freehand on a firearm is out of the question.

R
 
Rethink starting out drilling and tapping guns... practice on pipe until you are better than this...

bubba700-0.jpg
 
Something no one has mentioned yet is the different types of steel found in receivers and the methods used to harden them. Some receivers are soft and D&T with relative ease. Especially those like the 10-22 with aluminum receivers. Others can be a real nightmare. Especially those with high titanium or chrome/nickel content. Some receiver steel is also toughened with vanadium which will cause binding of taps and drills to dull. It takes a very good tap to work cleanly and properly in these metals.

Some receivers are surface hardened as well and take a bit more attention and care to drill properly let alone tap.

Technique is also very important. I like to use a center drill to start the holes. They are much more rigid than regular drills and are much less likely to wander off true. You can get by with a cheap drill press as long as you start a pilot hole with a center drill.

Now, the big thing after learning how to properly D&T a hole is learning patience in set up and alignment. A gunsmith that is going to do a fair amount of D&T jobs will likely have a set of trammels or some other type of guide to help keep the holes true to the axis of the receiver/bore and of course just as important, proper spacing. Two piece bases can be a real bugaboo but full length single bases need to be measured so that all of the holes needed are perfectly spaced. The best machine for this is of course a properly aligned milling machine with vice and action specific jig. For most of us the mill is out of the question but with care, you can still use a drill press. Pilot holes with a center drill can offset the cost of a drill guide as well.

There really is a lot to learn about the tooling and techniques when it comes to D&Ting anything properly. If you can possibly find a knowledgeable mentor to get you started one on one I would strongly suggest you do so.
 
This is not going to work out well if you don't have the right tools and the skill to use them, ask around shouldn't cost much to have a tradesmen do the work.
 
Purchase high quality drill bits and taps in the sizes you will need. They are not that expensive!

I got a shotgun bead sight kit from brownells I think for 9$ am that came with two sights, drill bit and tap. The tools were skf and Hanson.
 
If there are machine shops in your local area then there are tooling supply companies that would have the drill and tap sizes you're looking for. They will also be able to help you choose whether or not you should use a spiral point or spiral flute tap and the type of tap for type of material.
 
Brownell's and other online stores in the US sell the taps typically found used in firearms. I started with a Crappy Tire set of T&D on sale of course. Used eBay and found a variety of sellers that sell tap and dies in the different styles and the numbered drill bits. Busy Bee sells drill press vises, I think it was princess auto where I bought a 4 L jug of cutting fluid oil which you mix with water. Should last me 20 or 30 years. Keep this in mind as it was a suggestion given to me. That some taps maybe "more brittle" than really hard taps but if they break it is easier to bust them out as they are brittle. Just take your time and turn and back up a lot.
 
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