Knowing how to use an electric drill is important. Every now and then a drilling task needs to be done. It is not difficult to use a drill but there are a couple of things you need to know. Drilling wood is fairly straight forward, but it is possible to create a fair bit of damage if you don’t know what you are doing. Like so much else, watching someone who knows how to drill makes it look very easy but first time you try yourself, things often turn out to be much more difficult than expected.

Before you start drilling, you need to make some preparations. Although not completely necessary, you increase your chances of success by doing some basic preparations.

Drilling wood is in most cases easy. Make sure that you have marked how deep you are going to drill. Many drills have a depth control bar that lets you set the depth of the hole. You can buy stop collars but many of them are of poor quality. If necessary, you can use masking tape to mark the depth. You simply wrap the masking tape around the drill bit tightly marking the depth. Once the tape touches the wood, you know the depth is right.

Note that if you are going to drill through the wood, you need to put a piece of scrap wood at the back there the drill bit will exit. Otherwise, the drill bit will damage the wood when it exits. Make sure that the scrap wood is tightly clamped to the wood. If you don’t have any scrap wood, you can try to prevent splintering by stopping once the tip of the bit is just through the wood, but before the rest of the bit is through. Then you carefully drill from the other side. Needless to say, this technique requires that you are good at using a drill.

Before you start drilling, mark the center of the hole by pressing a sharp object into the wood. You want to create a small indentation so that the drill bit does not slip when you start drilling.

Always start drilling slowly and don’t use much pressure. Make sure to avoid slipping or splintering. As a rule of thumb, the wider the hole, the slower speed you should use. By backing off slightly from time to time, you relieve the pressure on the drill bit. This also removes sawdust from the hole. Make sure that you keep the drill straight, otherwise the entry of the hole could become wider.

Note that you can use standard twist drill bits for metal also for wood drilling. But if you are going to drill in soft wood and need crisp holes, you should use high quality drill bits for wood. While spade bits are easy to use, they don’t make very clean holes. Forstner bits are expensive but they make very smooth holes.

Driving screws in wood is easy but also here you need to be careful not to damage the wood.