Starting a shop from scratch means making tooling decisions without history to guide you. What sizes do you stock? What quality level? How many of each? Where do you buy? What do you do when something wears out?
There's no universal answer — it depends on what work you're taking on. But there's a logical sequence for getting a drilling program set up correctly from day one, and it avoids the mistakes most new shops make when they're trying to get running fast.
Step 1: Define Your Material Scope First
Before buying a single drill bit, answer this question: what materials will you be drilling in the first twelve months? Not what you hope to be machining eventually — what you'll actually be running. Your material scope determines everything else: tool material, point geometry, helix requirements, and coolant needs.
If the answer is primarily mild steel with occasional aluminum, a standard HSS jobber set plus a separate cobalt set in common sizes covers most of what you'll face. If you're going into stainless, alloy steel, or exotics from day one, your base specification changes significantly and you should be buying cobalt as your standard rather than as a premium supplement.
Step 2: Build Your Base Stock — Common Sizes by Fractions, Wire, and Letter
A new shop needs three drill index sets as its foundation:
- Fractional set, 1/16" to 1/2" by 64ths: This covers the vast majority of general work. Buy one set of quality HSS jobber drills. Not the cheapest set at the home center — a proper industrial set from Morse, Norseman, Guhring, or similar. You'll be resharpening these, so quality matters.
- Wire gauge set (No. 1–60): Essential for tap drill sizing. Wire gauge drills come up constantly in threading work, and not having the right size forces you to drill undersize or oversize and live with bad threads. Don't skip this set.
- Letter set (A–Z): Fills the gap between wire gauges and fractions. Again, essential for tap drill sizing and for applications where the fractional steps are too coarse.
This is your starting crib — maybe 150 drill bits total. It's a real investment but it's a one-time purchase that forms the basis of your program for years.
Step 3: Layer in Specialty Tooling Based on Your First Jobs
Don't buy specialty tooling speculatively. Wait until you have work that needs it, then buy correctly for that application:
- Stainless work incoming: cobalt in the sizes you need
- Production holes in common sizes: screw machine (stub) length for rigidity
- Aluminum in volume: high-helix bits in the production sizes
- Deep holes: parabolic flute drills in the relevant diameters
- Sheet metal: flat-bottomed or pilot-point sheet metal bits
Buying specialty tooling before you need it wastes capital and creates crib clutter. The exception is split-point drills: if you're running any kind of production from day one, buy split-point geometry as your standard in the sizes you'll use most. The self-centering entry alone is worth it on anything but the most casual jobbing work.
Step 4: Set Up Storage with a System
How you store drills affects how fast you can work and how long the tooling lasts. Basic requirements:
Indexed storage: Drill indexes (the hinged cases where each drill sits in a labeled slot) keep bits organized and prevent tip contact. For the three base sets described above, this is how they'll come when you buy them — keep them in the indexes. Dumping a set into a drawer is how bits get lost, confused, and chipped.
Tip protection: Any bit not in an indexed case should be stored tip-down in a holder, in a tube, or wrapped if stored loose. Bits rolling loose in a metal drawer destroy each other's cutting edges.
Labeling: Every storage location should be labeled with what belongs there. If you have machine-side storage for production bits at each machine, label the slots. When something gets used and returned, it goes back in the right place.
Step 5: Choose a Resharpen-or-Replace Policy from Day One
New shops often default to replace-when-dull because it's simpler and the per-bit cost seems low. This works until it doesn't — usually when you're into specialty sizes, cobalt, or larger diameters where replacement cost is real.
A better policy from the start: establish that the base fractional set is always resharpened, not replaced. Set a service interval (number of holes or a periodic pull based on how heavily the shop runs), identify a resharpening service, and build the service cycle into your standard operating procedure.
The cobalt and specialty sets follow the same logic with higher priority — these are worth even more per bit, and replacement cost is a worse option. Wire gauge and letter drills in smaller sizes are often cheaper to replace than resharpen, so apply the policy where it makes economic sense.
Step 6: Document Your Feed/Speed Starting Points
Every drill program needs a speed and feed reference. You don't need elaborate software — a printed table works. For HSS in common materials:
- Mild steel: 80–100 SFM
- Alloy steel: 50–70 SFM
- Stainless: 30–50 SFM (cobalt)
- Aluminum: 200–300 SFM
- Cast iron (dry): 50–80 SFM
Post these at the drill press or CNC control. New employees working from documented parameters make fewer tool-destroying mistakes than those who are guessing. Your tooling lasts longer, your holes are more consistent, and you have a reference to work from when something isn't performing right.
A well-set-up drilling program isn't complicated. It's a good base stock, stored correctly, matched to your material scope, run at correct parameters, and serviced on a regular cycle. Getting that system in place on day one is worth far more than spending the same time and money on equipment that won't help if the tooling program is a mess.