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I have a question about hobby hand drills, I have got one of the army painter ones and have been drilling some hard materials for example standard miliput now its not drilling much. Assuming I have blunted it, are the kind of drill bits that come with such a drill intended for soft plastic, so probably not made out of the most resilient materials. What kind of drill bits should I buy so they live a bit longer?

Most normal drill bits for wood would be fine.

hobbyist dont really drill anything harder than pewter at best.

though its possible army painter just package them with cheap Chineseium ones so its a hit or miss some times.

My bits are all HSS - they go through plastic, hardened & cured putty and metals with equal ease. That said, my bits were bought separately from an engineering supplier.

Yes, bits can get blunt - but they can also be resharpened (you can get tools that do this).

yeah they may well be just cheap bits, which would have been perfectly fine until i end up drilling anything harder than plastic card. I'll get some proper bits, thanks.

 chromedog wrote:
My bits are all HSS - they go through plastic, hardened & cured putty and metals with equal ease. That said, my bits were bought separately from an engineering supplier.

Yes, bits can get blunt - but they can also be resharpened (you can get tools that do this).

Probably not that practical for those tiny tiny tiny drill bits for pins.

its easier to just get a pack of them.

personally i use PCB cutting carbide micro drill bits. though they are brittle and break quite often they go through 90% of material like butter.

and then the drill bit breaks

I use 2 types of bits, there's a set of relatively cheap chinese bits , there's about about 6-8 each of sizes .4mm to 3.2mm in a case that I got off Ebay for $15, I mostly use those when I need an off-size and they last relatively well so far, the larger ones are really good but the ones smaller than 1mm are kinda crap.

90% of the time I use these .95mm carbide bits and they are AWESOME! They're meant for fine milling machines but work incredibly well in pin vices and are super cheap. They take some getting used to because they are super sharp and super hard, but brittle, so they'll cut through pewter like butter but if you don't drill straight you'll snap the bit. Takes a bit of practice, and even now sometimes I'll go weeks using the same bit, sometimes I'll snap 4 in a night. There's other sizes, but for some reason the .95mm are sold cheaply in bulk and they're well sized for paper clips from the dollar store that i use for pins