[Matthias Wandel] is a woodworker par excellence. He’s the guy behind all those wooden gear contraptions, he made cove molding on a table saw, and if the phrase, ‘don’t do this unless you know what you’re doing’ applies to anyone, it applies to [Matthias]. Now he’s getting into the fidget spinner craze, but there’s a problem in the workshop: [Matthias] couldn’t find the right sized drill bit, so he modified a Forstner bit to contain the heart of a spinner.
[Matthias] has a few roller skate bearings, which are 22mm in diameter. However, the closest drill to this size was 7/8″, or 22.23mm. A drill can be ground down, so the bit was chucked into a hand drill and taken over to the bench grinder. As with most things [Matthias] demonstrates, you shouldn’t do this unless you know what you’re doing. [Matthias] does.
With the bit ground down to 22mm, [Matthias] drilled a hole in a piece of wood, inserted the bearing, and completed an epic quest that was his destiny. There is no use for fidget spinners, so [Matthias] decided to make this one explode. After cutting several notches in this wooden spinner, [Matthias] applied shop air liberally and spun the spinner up until it fell apart.
You can check out the video of the fidget spinner carnage below, or check out [Matthias]’ write-up here.
Or just get a metric 22mm drill…
Or stay with the odd size of the hole and wrap a piece of paper around the bearing. Should be nice enough for this purpose (of destruction) :-)
If Matthias has shown me something over the years is there’s nothing jigs and soda pop shims can’t fix.
I personally use a thin strip of aluminum tape around the bearing for a nice fit.
God are you serious? Use the SI units?
Nope! Better use some units with a not repeatable factor and random fraction like 7/8″
where do you get your drugs?
seriously? i want some of what your having…
They aren’t as common as imperical, but you can get them. Lee Valley sells them, as do a number of other places.
Canada is a vast country, a little more specific would help. I mean am i going to be going on a trip out to the west coast? or maybe im heading the other way to the maritime provinces…
Either way it would be nice to be able to plan a couple stops along the way, like to bolts+, brafasco, lee valley tools or one of the many other fine shops where metric drill bits can be found…
The french speaking parts of Canada (Quebec et al) uses metric
If you want to make a special trip to a store and/or wait for them to be ordered in. I think there’s a lot of value in learning how to mod the tools you have on hand.
http://www.ebay.ca – order from china.
At least the piece of junk costs about $0.40 Canadian to ship internationally from China all the way to Canada.
It’s oddly hard in mainland Europe to get imperial measured bolts and such I find, so I imagine it’s not easy to get metric in the US either.
Even the some Chinese from-China online shops seem to force Europe in that they only show metric search results. WTF is up with that?
It is pretty easy to get metric nuts, bolts and wrenches here in the US A large hardware chain (Ace) has a good selection. Drill bits are a little harder, but not too difficult as long as it is not Sunday afternoon.
Weird shit, why one thing yes but the other no.
This is hack-a-day bub.
Hmmm, I live in Canada and they are everywhere… I only see old mechanic talking in imperial measurement, the country is pretty much metric.
My apologies to Annie, I was thinking of wrench, not drill bit.I never really paid attention to drill bit and they do appear to be somewhat harder to get surprisingly.
Like 6 out of 7 parts everywhere?
WOW, simply amazing! Awesome!
Surprised he didn’t make a wooden Forstner bit. And a wooden bearing.
LOL. OTOH: if anyone could do that, it would be [Matthias Wandel].
“you shouldn’t do this” Of course not. No fscking way I am going to destroy my expensive Forstner bit for this shit.
But Matthias probably has a set of good Forstner bits for real woodworking and a set of crappy ones for hacking about.
that bit looks an awful lot like the harbor freight imitation of a Forstner bit, they’re pretty disappointing even if you accidently get a good set of them so this mod can only be seen as an improvement.
BRB grinding all my imperial tools to make terrible metric ones
[Matthias Wandel] is great, but making cove molding with a table saw is a trick that has been around since before he was born.
Talented people like him are reduced to circus clowns to get “likes” and “views”. I know they make money, but it is still lame.
Better than selling your ass in a back alleyway, but not much better.
Yeah I’ve heard Lou Reed singing about such things, ever heard of him?
Matias, remove the dust caps and grease from the bearings, this will greatly increase the high speed and make exploding easier. For everybody else don´t explode your spinners if you don´t want to miss parts or die.