# Holes with 'Iffy' eyes??



## Little_Freddie (Jan 12, 2010)

Hiya All,  newbie on here, but at almost 60, the old peepers aint too hot,....good optics help,  but I do find I have trouble selecting drills/reamers/taps,  especially under 10mm... I have a little dodge I use on the above, as reading the etch gives me a lot of trouble.

I am also a Radio Ham, and an aeromodeller, so I know the resistor colour (color? ;D) code, and have lots of pots (tins?) of enamel paint. So, I band the chuck end of my drills/taps/reamers with the corresponding paints,  i.e. 3.2mm reamer is banded orange/red,...... 5mm green.....  8.5mm.. grey/green.....  for metric (which is my main mode....) I find this saves me hours of struggling with the printing,.... cant think how you would apply this to imperial,..  but they made me have a Euro passport, so I thought I would go the whole hog!!! :big: :big:

Hope this helps anyone,....  ( it will certainly ensure you get the right size drill, if you borrow one off me!! ;D )

  Cheers,   Fred


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## vlmarshall (Jan 12, 2010)

EXCELLENT idea!  :bow: :bow: Welcome to the forum.

I don't know how you'd apply it to imperial, either... perhaps the number of 64ths, or similar...


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## mklotz (Jan 12, 2010)

I've been using the same procedure for years to "label" my checkering files.

For fractional designations, perhaps you could use one of the tolerance codes* as a separator between numerator and denominator. For example 17/64 might be labeled

brown violet -silver- blue yellow

or, for decimal values use it as the decimal point.

1.25 = brown -gold- red green

--
*After the three color bands denoting resistor value, there is a space for a fourth band denoting the tolerance of the resistor. IIRC, the code is:

none - 20%
silver - 10%
gold - 5%


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## Twmaster (Jan 12, 2010)

Wow. Excellent idea! {Mike pushes the applaud button}


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## wm460 (Jan 20, 2010)

Great idea Fred, will keep that in mind.


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## mklotz (Jan 20, 2010)

You can extend this idea and use it to mark stock in your shop.

The color codes used by metal distributors are, like nearly everything else in this standard-phobic country (USA), not standardized and so do not provide a reliable means of identifying stock.

Make up your own code. Assign a number between zero and 999 to each of the types of stock you use - a thousand possible codes should be enough for even the most professional shop. Buy paint marker pens in the ten colors of the code...

0 - black
1 - brown
2 - red
3 - orange
4 - yellow
5 - green
6 - blue
7 - violet
8 - grey
9 - white

Then, three swipes with the paint pens and your stock is marked. I mark one end and saw stock off the opposite unmarked end but, if you lack self-discipline, make stripes the length of the stock so it's marked down to the last, tiny fragment.


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## bentprop (Jan 20, 2010)

A drill stand is a great help,if you can't read the numbers,a wipe with white enamel makes them stand out.
Also,you can get a set of 3 loupes quite cheaply in most modelshops.
I also use a magnifier headband with 3x magnification,very handy when centre popping.


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