Plug Cutters, some help needed.

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a great Christmas, im sad its all over now, does anyone else think it should last longer than 2 weeks? I say it should be all of December

Anyway, I got myself a little set of plug cutters off of Ebay & didnt look at them until Christmas, it comprises of 8 cutters,

I havent got my camera ready to go so ive found some pics on the net, im not sure why there are 2 types, 4 hollow ones & 4 solid ones.

The first 4 look like these, kinda hollow looking:

The other 4 are like this, more solid looking:

I thought I should just check before I start using them, I read one type is used for softwoods & the other for harder woods, is that right? if so I would expect it to be the solid ones for hard woods as they generally look a lot stronger.

Any help you can give would be great, your probably sitting there thinking "what a daft question, its so obvious" but ive never had a set of these before so im green all over! LOL.

Thanks Guys,
Nick

 

[DaveL]

Hi Nick,

You have two different types of plug cutter there, I have a similar set.

The ones withe the 4 prongs on cut a tapered plug while the ones with the ring on the end cut a parallel plug.

I have used both types in hard and soft woods. I would recommend you use them in a pillar drill, they will snatch if they are not square to the wood when the cut starts. If you don't have a pillar drill then clamp the wood and use both hands on the drill.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Dave,

Ah thats explained it, thanks m8, thats cleared up that little problem :wink:

They are not the highest quality but then again I won the bid on Ebay & got them for £3.50 so one cant complain at those prices! hehe, but then again they are not something that is used a lot so its great.

Alrighty then, thanks for the reply,
Nick

 

[Philly]

Nick
I have a set like this-the one cutter is for parallel sided plugs, the other for slightly tapered plugs!
Clamp your workpiece to the drillpress table when cutting the plugs and always cut close to the edge so the sawdust can escape-this stops the bit over-heating and sending it to an early grave.
Hope this helps
Philly

 

[dedee]

I have a similar tapered plug cutter. The only "drill press" I have is a chuck in a multico mortiser. Just in case anyone else is daft enough to try, the 3000 rpm that the mortiser runs at is way to fast to cut plugs, burn marks will appear all the way down the plug (especially in beech) which will be visible when used.

Andy