Electric drills make holes in a split second. But I generally prefer more manual methods for better control and precision - like hole punchers for metal and hand drills for resin and polymer clay jewelry pieces. In this tool review, I will compare between the use of a simple hand drill and a spiral rachet (spring) drill on polymers like resin and clay.
I bought a cheap manual drill from a local craft store.
Little Windows sent a spiral rachet drill to me for review. They both had bits for making hole sizes we typically need for jump ring insertion. The bits were inserted into the holes of the drills once the collet chuck had been unscrewed enough. Then the collets were handtightened.
The manual drill actually had 2 bits but the small one was not useable. It was so cheaply made its collet could not hold onto the small bit. There were 3 different bits for the spiral rachet drill - I tested out its largest bit as it was closest in size with the manual one. The first video* shows how a spiral rachet drill works. It is simply an up and down action.
Both drills did the job with my snowflake resin jewelry pieces which had resin, unshrunk Shrinky Dink and resin film in layers. It was harder going with completed Shrinky Dink pieces with the manual drill (not shown), mainly because the top of the drill was pressing uncomfortably into my palm. Holes are best prepared using a single hole paper punch
before shrinking!
Polymer clay was easy with both drill. The polymer clay piece I used was a test piece from Helen Breil - a polymer clay artisan and fellow member of the Grand River Bead Society.
The difference just as with the resin pieces is the time it takes. It is much faster with the spiral rachet drill as you can see from this second short video*.
I would definitely recommend a spiral rachet drill if you do a lot of polymer and resin work. It makes the task easier. While the bits were fine for this particular spiral rachet drill, getting slightly bigger ones might make sense if you like to double up on jump rings for security.
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