Having made an ice drill with your own hands, you can provide yourself with a reliable auxiliary device for ice fishing for the entire winter season. If you can still make a hole in thin ice using an ordinary ax or an ice pick, then it’s unlikely that you can make a convenient neat hole in the meter thick using inefficient tools at hand. Therefore, the issue of how realistic it is to make ice drills for fishing with your own hands remains an issue for many fishermen.
Mechanical ice drills
A significant number of experienced anglers are quite skeptical about the use of the so-called motorized ice drills, classifying such a factory tool as a poaching one. However, there are those who enjoy using this equipment, because it makes it possible to significantly reduce the time required to create neat holes.
In the process of operating motorized ice drills, the strict observance of safety rules plays the most important role. Of particular importance is the selection of the appropriate fuel. Therefore, giving preference to this option, to stop the choice is exclusively on the brands of fuel recommended by manufacturers.
How to make an ice drill with your own hands?
The basis of a simple home-made ice drill is a metal tube on which a spiral-wound strip is fixed. To cope with the manufacture of a homemade screw is quite difficult, but still real. The whole difficulty lies in the need to work on turning equipment, access to which is not available for many average fishermen. As for the remaining small elements of home-made ice drill, only a professional turner with experience can make them.
A self-made classic ice drill is a robust large-sized drill that can be driven either manually or with a gas or electric motor.
All homemade ice drills are conditionally divided into several groups. Some tools are manufactured on the basis of factory models, which are being modernized. Other anglers prefer to create such a tool manually from scratch.
Stages of making a homemade ice ax
To make an ice drill with your own hands, you must follow the following instructions:
- At first, you should spend enough time to find a really suitable metal tube of sufficient diameter. One end of the tube will be used as a pen or rotator, and the opposite - under the auger.
- A more difficult step is to create a base for fastening knives. It is better to turn to a skilled locksmith or turner for help, who will not only create a sketch or a mock up of a future design, but also turn the idea into reality.
- To simplify the task of fixing the screw parts, it is better to make them as short as possible by welding to the pipe, and also reliably connecting to each other.
- The final part of creating an ice drill with your own hands is to assemble all the components, fix them, polish the surfaces and paint the finished product.
We make an ice drill from a chainsaw with our own hands
If you need to make a home-made motorized ice drill, you can take a factory-made hand tool as a basis or use an auger independently turned on a lathe. An inexpensive Chinese chainsaw is suitable as a unit for upgrading a hand drill . It will also require the manufacture of a simple nozzle for connecting the manual and mechanical components of the future unit. It can be machined by hand or bought in a specialized store.
The manufacture of a motorized ice drill based on a chainsaw will significantly reduce the time required for drilling even the deepest holes. In general, among the advantages of such a rather non-standard solution, it is worth noting:
- high drilling speed;
- excellent unit performance;
- Significant cash savings compared to acquiring a factory mechanized model;
- preservation of extra strength, nerves and their own health.
Knife sharpening
Creating an ice drill with your own hands, great attention should be paid to the effective sharpening of knives. The procedure consists in removing a thin metal layer at the required angle. The usability of the future product will depend on the quality of the cutting edge.
Sharpening knives for homemade ice drill is recommended on specialized turning and grinding machines. In this case, it is better to abandon amateur performances and experiments, immediately contacting an experienced experienced specialist.
In the process of sharpening, the knives are not only given the necessary sharpness, but also all kinds of errors, notches and burrs are removed. If sharpening is required for knives mounted on a makeshift ice ax that was already in operation, then you can turn to the old-fashioned method using a grinder with abrasive wheels. At the same time, the main condition for sharpening knives is unhurried work and extremely accurate handling of the tool.
What if the knives of a homemade ice drill refuse to enter the ice?
A similar situation is often encountered by both fishermen who made a ring ice drill with their own hands, and those who purchased a factory tool. All kinds of tricks, for example, the selection of appropriate gaskets and washers, rarely allow you to solve the problem. After all, its root lies in improper deburring and insufficiently careful processing of the cutting edge of the knives during the production or sharpening of the tool.
In reality, solving a problem is not so difficult. It is enough to use an ordinary strong knife, having removed all protruding errors by removing the back side of its blade. In conclusion, the knives can be carefully processed with sandpaper.