On 2 Oct, 05:14, wrote:
Last evening I dug out an old gate that came with my rural property
from my scrap pile. I planned to take this thing to the recycler
several times but never did. Last evening I had a pony break his
fence, and it was too late to buy anything. It turned out this old
gate was made to fit the situation. The only problem is that one end
did not have a hole drilled into it to run a wire thru it so I could
wire it to the post. This homemade gate is made out of some sort of
extremely hard angle iron. I'm thinking it might be old bed frame
iron. I had to drill that 1/4" hole, and ran my battery powered drill
battery dead and barely left an indent in the 1/8 inch thick steel. I
got my plug in drill and I must have run it for 15 minutes and had
only penetrated the steel about 1/32 of an inch. The bit looked sharp
when I started, but was dull by that time. I got another used bit (of
unknown quality). That one turned bright orange and the end of it
melted. Frustrated, and not having another bit that size, I grabbed a
5/16 carbide tipped bit intended to drill concrete. In less than a
minute I went thru the steel with little effort. I never thought that
concrete bits worked on metals (steel / iron), but it worked great and
did not show any dullness after drilling thru this extremely hard
steel. Has anyone else used these bits on steel?

By the way, the gate worked great. Its only a temporary fix, but I'll
keep this gate now. Now I know why farmers keep everything. One
never knows when a piece of junk will come in handy.

Alvin

-- Its only a temporary fix

You left off the other half of that common home repair statement:

It's only temporary...unless it works.