Thursday, May 31, 2012

Unusual Tools: Sutton Drill Index


You almost never encounter Australian-made tools over here.  So, in a "coals to Newcastle" scenario, this had to come from Down Under in somebody's suitcase.

The Sutton Tool & Gauge Manufacturing Co. was founded by William Sutton in 1917 in Castlemaine, Victoria Australia.  It has remained a family business.  In 1960, they decided on the use of the “ground from solid” approach to making twist drills, in which the drill is ground from a solid, heat-treated high speed steel blank.  The drill was marketed as the “Silver Bullet.”  In 2001, they purchased Patience & Nicholson (P&N), another old Australian drill-making firm.  I've got several P&N drill bits in my shop.

If you're going to use such tools, you also need to be conversant with the proper lingo.  So, courtesy of the 1979 Grolier's New Book of Knowledge, I offer the following table below.  It may be outdated, but I don't need any nong or ear basher to grizzle about it.


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