Enlarging "reaming" sink hole in kitchen basin

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Enlarging "reaming" sink hole in kitchen basin - seeking conical drill bit

Hatch

816 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 57

#198331 5-Jul-2016 01:11

It's time to replace our leaky kitchen mixer. I purchased a decent flexible head mixer from Bunnings requested by the boss. However the original sink hole is approx 34mm and the new fitting requires a hole of around 38mm.

Conical drills or step drills are the tools to do the job, but they are quite expensive for the size I want.

Does anyone have one lying around I could borrow or alternatively an ideas on how to accomplish this task without said tool?

I'm probably going to end up do this by hand with a semi circular file. I have a Dremel clone but the dremel bits I have are too soft for stainless steel.

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Hatch

816 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 57

#1586526 5-Jul-2016 16:37

$8.00 + GST hire a day in Christchurch.

http://www.smithshire.co.nz/equipment/plumbing/chassis-punch-38mm.html

Bloody Auckland.

Hatch

816 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 57

#1587552 7-Jul-2016 11:38

Adamww:

Hatch,

LOL at all the helpful advice here...

Anyhow if you haven't got it sorted by the weekend, I have a engineering workshop in Henderson, It might be a bit of a hike but I would be happy to lend you whatever you need for the job. I suspect a chassis punch wont work well in this case since you are only taking a 2mm bite so I would probably give you a die grinder and carbide burr unless one of my step drills is big enough...

I assume you can email or PM me through this board.

Hey that's a lovely gesture from you and much appreciated.

In the end we just followed what the plumber had said he would have done. My father came over and did the job whilst I was at work. A hand file and some elbow grease, beauty in simplicity (but perhaps not a very pretty hole lol).

Flicked my dad a $50 for his time and hard work too. Dad's rock!

PS: Thank you for everyone's very helpful and entertaining discourse. At times I forgot I was just making a hole a bit bigger and imagined we were attempting some amazing engineering feat. Much obliged to you all.