In a small shop — two to ten machinists, a mix of manual and CNC work, job orders changing daily — drill maintenance falls through the cracks because no one owns it. The operator grabs a drill from the bin, runs the job, puts the drill back (or doesn't), and moves on. Nobody's tracking wear. Nobody's flagging dull tools before they become broken tools or out-of-tolerance holes.
The result is a pattern most small shops recognize: broken drills mid-job, scrapped parts drilled oversize because the drill wandered, overtime spent troubleshooting a hole quality problem that turns out to be a 50-cent tooling issue, and a "drill bin" that mixes sharp tools, dull tools, and damaged tools with no visible difference between them.
A 15-minute weekly drill audit doesn't fix all of that overnight, but it breaks the cycle. It creates a rhythm of awareness that turns reactive tooling management into something predictable and controlled.
The audit doesn't require special equipment. For most job shops, you need:
A drill tray or rack. Even a piece of scrap wood with labeled holes gets the drills sorted. Organizing by size and separating sharp from dull from "send to resharpen" is 80% of the battle. Drills that live in a heap in a bin can't be audited — they have to be findable first.
A loupe or 10x magnifier. You don't need a microscope. A basic 10x loupe from any tooling supplier — $15 to $30 — lets you see the cutting edge condition clearly. Bright light and 10x magnification will show chipping, rounding, and cratering that's invisible to the naked eye.
A drill point gauge (optional but helpful). A simple drill point gauge checks lip angle symmetry. Off-center points cause oversized holes and drill wander. This is a $20–$40 item that pays for itself the first time it catches an asymmetric grind before a job runs.
A ledger or spreadsheet. Even a notebook works. The goal is tracking which drills get resharpened and when, so you build data over time on how long your drills actually last in the materials you run.
Set aside 15 minutes at the end of Friday or the start of Monday. Here's the sequence:
Step 1 — Collect (2 minutes). Pull every drill that ran this week. If your shop doesn't have a return-to-rack habit, this is the week you start one. Ask operators to put any drill they used in a "return" tray at the end of each day. This takes about two weeks of repetition before it becomes automatic.
Step 2 — Sort by size (1 minute). Put them back in the rack in order. Anything that's broken, bent, or has visible major damage goes immediately into a "damaged" pile — don't waste inspection time on tools that are already done.
Step 3 — Inspect edges (8 minutes). Hold each drill under bright light with the loupe. You're looking for: edge rounding (the cutting lip has a visible radius instead of a sharp corner), chipping (small notches in the cutting edge), and flank cratering or built-up edge on the relief surface. Any drill with visible edge rounding under 10x goes into the "resharpen" pile. Chipping means the drill has been pushed too hard — note this for a feed/speed conversation with whoever ran it.
Step 4 — Check point symmetry (2 minutes). For your most-used drills, quick-check lip angle with the gauge or eyeball the point under the loupe. An asymmetric point means the drill will walk and drill oversized. Flag these for resharpening even if the edge looks acceptable.
Step 5 — Log and pack (2 minutes). Count your resharpen pile. Write down: date, drill sizes, quantities. If you're sending out for resharpening, this becomes your shipment. If you're doing it in-house, these are queued for the grinder. Update your inventory — if any common size is down to one sharp drill, note it as a reorder flag.
After four to six weeks of audits, patterns emerge that change how you buy and spec tooling.
You'll see which sizes burn through sharpness fastest. In most job shops, a few sizes — typically whatever diameter appears on 30–40% of jobs — get run hard while others sit untouched. Those high-use sizes are candidates for bulk buying and a dedicated resharpening relationship. When you can predict you'll send out eight ½" drills every three weeks, you can batch them efficiently and reduce per-drill resharpening cost.
You'll also see failure patterns. If the same drill size consistently shows chipping rather than rounding, someone's running too slow with too much feed and the edge is loading up. If drills come back with heavily worn flanks, speeds are too high. These are coaching conversations with data behind them instead of "slow down" said to a machinist who thinks they're already doing everything right.
Over time, you'll establish a reliable holes-per-resharpen number for each material you run. That number is the foundation of real tooling cost accounting — and it usually shows that resharpened HSS is costing you less per hole than you thought, which changes how you think about tooling budgets.
The audit will surface drills that are questionable — worn, but maybe not quite at the resharpen threshold yet. Here's a simple decision rule:
If the drill is under 60% of its original length (from point to flute runout), it can be resharpened. Each resharpening removes roughly 1/16" to ⅛" of length. A drill that started at 3" long has room for six to ten resharpens before it's too short to hold securely.
If the drill is over 60% of original length, it's in the middle of its useful life — resharpen freely. If it's under 30% (a stub), evaluate whether the diameter and length still match your application. Short stubs are sometimes useful for rigid, accurate work; often they go to a reduced-use pile or get discarded.
For expensive cobalt drills used in stainless, hardened steel, or other difficult materials — always resharpen rather than replace unless the drill is physically damaged. The per-drill cost is high enough that resharpening economics are unambiguous.
The hardest part of the 15-minute audit is the first four weeks. The rack isn't set up. The operators aren't returning tools consistently. You don't have a loupe or you can't find it. These are friction points, not reasons the system doesn't work.
Lower the friction: dedicate one shelf or drawer to the audit rack permanently. Label it. Put the loupe in the same spot every week. Start with just your five most-used drill sizes if doing all of them feels overwhelming. Build the habit on a small set first, then expand.
A shop that runs a weekly 15-minute audit will find, within 60 days, that they're breaking fewer drills, scrapping fewer parts, and spending less on replacement tooling than they did before. The audit doesn't require expensive equipment or a full-time tooling manager. It requires fifteen minutes of consistent attention and someone willing to own it.
Pack up the drills from your weekly audit and mail them in. WinsloMatic precision resharpening — most orders back in 5 business days.
Get a Quote →