Drilling Holes = Easy as Pie!!

[darthteddy]

Well today I drank a red bull and with my new found energy i decided to drill sometihng out. So i went to walmary and picked up a 10g and some Dimond Dremal tool bits. I got a peice of PVC pipe that was the same outer demention as my bulkhead and taped it on. Then i did the ole clay well idea. I filled it up with cool water and got to it. Not that this wasnt a name brand tank so it wasnt tempered. Not that all name brand tanks are and not all not namebrands arent, this peticular one was not. Anyway i poped in the bit with the dimond coated ball at the end and went around the outside of the PVC ring i cut off. When it was etched in pretty well i took away the pvc circle and poped in the bit with a pointy end. Still dimond tipped. I then proceded to go around the established circle a little bit at a time at its highest speed till it broke through. The bits came together for like 5 bucks. Took about 10 minutes to drill. I realize its not thick but i just thought i would post it.

[ski1297]

Cool!

[goodfortune]

Darthteddy:

I think that using a piece of PVC pipe as the template for the hole is a great idea; I wish I thought of that before . I found that using a dremel (with the rotozip glass and tile bit) was quite effective at drilling small tanks, but I was never able to cut nice, neat holes using them.

Another option I tried recently are diamond coated hole saws. There is a vendor out of Hong Kong that sells them very inexpensively on ebay. It took me all of 5 min to drill a 10g tank, using the same principles as described in your post, and I was able to cut a nice, neat hole

- Michael

[wharyat]

The dremel method is great for thinner glass.

But yes, for under 15 bucks including shipping you can get some holesaws off ebay that will allow you to drill thicker glass a lot easier than the dremel.

PM me if you would like a link to his store.

[darthteddy]

I have allways wanted to try those hole saw bits....i looked at them but because Paypall has a vendetta against my credit card number i can never order anything off of it.

[Little Luey]

I read your post and I got enough curage to try it myself. Only it was not so easy for me, my dremmel only has 2000rpm and it took forever to get the holes done, the second one was faster than the first one. I think I was probably too carefull about not breaking the tank that made me go slower also.
But now that is done I am glad I did do it.

Cheers