Thanks for your reply and that of PrecisionMachinest. It is nice to
hear from people with some experience and the equipment to measure
what they did. And really nice to have some numbers on which to base
what I do. Not that I need to drill extremely accurate holes very
often, but I would rather not buy a boring bar for extremely small
holes if I don't have to. The discussions that say you can drill
straight holes or that say that twist drills don't drill straight
holes aren't much use without some numbers on what is straight. I
mean that I could say you can't get a straight hole even if you drill
then bore and ream. Just depends on what you mean by straight.

But certainly a hole can be drilled that is more than adequate for
guiding a hand drill and or tap. On some occasions where I had to use
a hand drill, I have just drilled a hole thru a piece of two by four
with the drill press before going to where ever I needed to drill and
tap a hole. That is better than trying to drill and tap with no guide
and has always proved to be good enough.

Dan


Eric R Snow wrote in message
Greetings Dan,
And a 1" deep .138" hole
straight within .004 can be done by center drilling first and then
drilling with a split point drill. Even using just the split point
drill it could be done but the drill needs to be started very
carefully. In fact, with proper technique, I'd be surprised if the
hole wasn't within .004"
Cheers,
Eric