On 2007-12-03, RoyJ wrote:
Bruce Spainhower wrote:

[ ... ]

Do yourself a favor and go buy 2-flute gun taps in all the smaller sizes you
use, and 3-flute gun taps for the larger sizes. They throw the chips in front
of the tap, which means you'll never have to back up in any material unless
it's a blind hole, and then only to empty the chips when you're done. Tap
brass dry, aluminum with kerosene or d-limonene (orange oil), and steel with
Rapid Tap. Once you try gun taps, you'll wonder how they still sell the
standard 4-flute taps.

Ah ha. An improvement! Can you run those in 6-32 or 8-32 in aluminum
with a low speed cordless drill?

The 8-32 should be no problem. 6-32, however, is the thread
from hell. Someone made a poor choice many years ago when they decided
to stretch the 32 TPI standard all the way down from 10-32 to 6-32. By
the time you get to a #6 screw, the threads remove such a large
percentage of the overall diameter that the resulting thread (and tap)
is quite weak for either side loads or over-torquing. With the tap in a
hand drill (battery powered or with a power cord) it becomes hard to
hold the drill motor in line with the hole for the whole time of tapping
-- especially when you are trying to switch the drill from forward to
reverse.

What would be a much better way to go would be with a tapping
head in a drill press -- but this can run into money if you aren't lucky
about picking up an appropriately sized used one on eBay or at a swap
meet.

If I can get it by the crusty old codger I'll do it.

The gun taps -- pretty likely. The tapping head (if you don't
already have one) --probably not. :-)

Good Luck,
DoN.

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