Best Place to Buy Gun 7/8" Drill

[Flute Maker]

Does anyone know of the best place to buy a 7/8" gun drill to bore a 30" hole ?? I'll have to start short and gradually work up to 30"...Any ideas on this?

 

[CarvedTones]

You should get up with David O'Neal. I visited his shop a while back and he uses gun drills on the lathe to make a lot of flutes. He's a very nice guy who was happy to share info. I have been watching eBay for a very similar item; we will have to coordinate so we don't get in a bidding war. Are you thinking about the whole system with forced air to clear chips? I am back and forth about that. It more than doubles the price of bits, but allows you to drill much faster as you don't have to back out to clear every couple of inches.

 

[CarvedTones]

Mike,

I saw the thread about your new lathe - congrats! But do keep in mind that 30 + 30 = more than 42; you will have a single bit precision boring limit of less than half the between centers max, because you put a chuck in the tailstock to hold the bit and the chuck is bigger than your typical live center and you chuck the blank with something larger than a spur center. The reason I qualified that with "precision" is that you can feed a bit in without it chucked and it will self center but with a little slop and the reason I qualified it with "single bit" is that you could get a shorter one to start and a longer one to complete the hole. You can also flip the blank and if the hole is very precise there won't be a detectable edge. But that won't works for NAFs.

 

[CarvedTones]

The running monologue continues. I remembered that I had a picture of David's lathe (well, most of it; the bed is so long it runs out of the picture ).

David his self:

Pretty lousy phone pics. Some of his flutes in progress:

He does nothing but NAFs, so he needs that really long bore from one end.