Drilling Questions

[jmcbroom]

I know this topic has prolly been beat into the dirt, but I gotta few questions. I tested drilled a broken 30 gallon this evening and noticed that on the inside of the hole the glass chipped around the edges. How can I prevent this on my main tank?

I used a steady flow from my water hose and went very slow, took about 5 minutes to cut a 60mm hole.

Any ideas.

Thanks.

 

[DHyslop]

Some people put tape on the inside of the glass. If you can secure another piece of glass inside I find that works better.

Dan

 

[jaiden]

I'm far from being an expert on this, but I have been reading up on the subject lately in planning to drill myself. When people who have been successful have said it takes "a long time" they usually say 30min at the least! some say 1 to 1.5 hr "with breaks"

 

[jmcbroom]

30 minutes to drill through 1/8" glass, no way. If that's the case, it's gonna take a long, long, long time to drill through my 105 gallon display (1/2" glass).

I'll try the back up glass tonight on my broken tank.

Thanks.

 

[DHyslop]

I'm a veteran of 7 holes now. I find my best work takes about 10 minutes. The worst hole I did took the longest, about 30 minutes.

Another bit of advice for the internal chipping if you have a big tank: Start the hole from the inside, then after a couple mm's flip the tank over, line up the drill with the existing hole and go the rest of the way through.

The biggest problem I had was keeping the drill exactly perpendicular to the tank during the operation. I found myself wallowing around a little bit, one side of the hole being a bit deeper. I bought one of these to fix that: Craftsman Drill Guide

Dan