On the weekend we drove to Leroy Merlin, where his wife looked after the shelf in the bathroom. Well, and accordingly, having arrived home, she asked to hang her.
I think it’s a trifling matter, there’s a drill, now I’ll drill a couple of holes, insert the dowel, tighten the screw, and that's it, the shelf hangs.
But it turned out that it was not there. He drilled the wall with a whistle practically, drove the dowel with a hammer, took a screwdriver, a bat.
And here I was overtaken by disappointment. The bit is licked off, so much so that it is not possible for her to screw in a screw, but then, as luck would have it, I took all the screwdrivers to the dacha.
There were two ways out, the first, to go buy a new bit, the second, to restore the bit, and try to harden it, so that it would last longer.
In order to save money, I decided to stop at the second option and restore it, especially since I can do it, at least I did it before, it worked out well.
To be honest, I've read about bit hardening before, but never hardened it. Someone writes that after hardening, it is better than new and will last longer, someone is not happy with hardening.
The opinions are different.
But first, what would be what to harden, the bit needs to be restored. This is not at all difficult to do. But you don't need to go to the store, and it is spent on a new bit too.
To restore a licked bat, I use a screwdriver and a fine-grained file.
I insert the bit into the screwdriver, twist it, and file the very tip of the bit with a file.
I grind until the file begins to walk on the untouched cross. Better to work with a file on a rag or newspaper, so there will be less dirt.
Then we restore the crosspiece itself with a file, there will need to be earned quite a bit.
You do not need to persist much, otherwise the tip of the bit will sharpen and you will need to grind it down again.
That's basically all, the geometry of the cross was restored, the licked part was ground off, the bit is again ready to perform its direct functions.
And in order for the bit to serve as long as possible, it can be hardened. Whether it is effective or not, who knows, by the way I wrote about this above that there are different opinions on this matter.
Previously, I did not temper, but this time I decided to try it, I'll see how much longer it will work. It is advised to use a gas burner for hardening, but I have it at my dacha, so its use is excluded.
From everything I read earlier, I understand that the main task of the crosspiece of the bit is to heat it red-hot, and then cool it sharply under cold water.
So, in principle, I did it, with the help of a gas stove burner, holding the bit in the pliers, I heated the crosspiece of the bit to red, it almost I became not red-transparent, then turned on cold water, and substituted the bat under the stream for fifteen seconds, so that it would sharply cooled down.
On this, as it were, everything, restored the bat, hardened, and hung the shelf. The request of the wife is fulfilled!
I will look at it in the future, how many screws will it be enough to tighten and whether it is worth hardening.