In article ,
Andrew McKay writes:
I'm sure some of you guys will have a laugh about this, but it
surprised the heck out of me!

I bought an SDS drill a couple of weeks back, never having used one
before. And today I got to drill me my first hole in a brick. Nothing
too magical there then.

Since the day I've been drilling holes in bricks to take a rawlplug
I've got used to my trusty Black and Decker with its hammer option
taking a while to drill thru the brick, especially the hard-type
bricks I happen to have in my walls around here. And I happen to have
used fairly meaty B&D electric drills by domestic standards.

However using the SDS drill with hammer mode was like a hot knife
cutting through butter. I had a rawlplug sized hole sunk into the
brick in seconds! I was literally gobsmacked!

I always start with hammer off. If you hit mortar (particularly
lime mortar) with SDS hammer on, you end up with a hole 3 times
broader and 10 times deeper than you intended in less than a
millisecond ;-)

Also, I've had the occasional soft brick which drills fine without
hammer, but shatters to a thousand pieces if an SDS hammer drill
bit touches it.

--
Andrew Gabriel