Milescraft 1318 DrillMate Portable Drillling Guide – Precision Drilling Jig Attachment for Drilling Angled or Straight Holes, Adjustable Drill Guide Attachment, Portable Drill Press with 3/8” Chuck

I recently received a Milescraft Drillmate 1318. Assembly went smoothly, and the parts appear to be well made and nicely finished. The angle adjustment seems easy to use and should be useful, although perpendicular holes are its main attraction for me. With a little work, I could set the drill angle at something other than one of the 15 degree increment pre-sets. So far my use of the Drillmate is admittedly limited. Not surprising, I found the Drillmate to be somewhere between a handheld drill and a drill press. It does not have the precision or controlled feed of a drill press, but the Drillmate is much more portable and versatile. It certainly offers a lot more precision than a handheld drill, at least in my hands, where perpendicular holes are embarrassingly rare. Attaching a power drill to the chuck shaft requires working around the post extensions in order to tighten the power drill’s chuck, which felt a little odd. Apparently I have only dealt with chucks in wide open spaces in my, up to this point, sheltered life. But it is certainly doable, and I attached an 18v Makita drill. I don’t have any handheld power drills around anymore that have a keyed chuck, but like my drill press, the Drillmate does. Using the Drillmate actually requires dealing with two drill chucks. My first project with the Drillmate was to enlarge the dog holes on my workbench from 1/2 inch diameter to the more common 3/4 inch diameter, using a spade bit. With spade bits, I find it easier to control the feed, although there would not be any material to guide the center point in this case. Twist drills sometimes want to grab and chip. In my experience, It is relatively easy to enlarge holes using a drill press and much more difficult to do with a handheld drill. But enlarging these workbench holes on my drill press was not possible. Enter the Drillmate. To give myself a better chance of minimizing tear out and avoiding irregular holes when enlarging them, I like to make a template with a hole drilled in it of the desired size. I made a template with a piece of 1/2 inch thick panel about 10 by 10 inches, and drilled a 3/4 inch hole in the center with the Drillmate. I then positioned this template hole over a bench top hole to be enlarged, centered the template as best I could, and clamped it to the bench top. I positioned the Drillmate’s base onto the template, lined up the drill bit in the template’s hole, and powered on the Makita. I proceeded to make a 3/4 inch dog hole out of a 1/2 inch hole. I was quite pleased with the results - the edges were clean, the hole was round, and the drilling was quick and drama free. Thirteen more holes to go, and all went well. I was impressed with the holes and the Drillmate. It worked smoothly and precisely. I never felt that I was fighting the return spring. Perpendicular holes - at last! The Drillmate has a rather small base, but a larger, auxilllary base can be used unattached as I did, or attached, which I am considering. I found the auxilllary base or template to be necessary when drilling holes near edges where the Drillmate base alone would hanging over the edge and unstable. One thing I remember about chuck keys is that every stinkin’ one of them disappears. And that drills with keyed chucks are worthless without the correct key. And that no key ever fit another other drill’s chuck. So I just ordered a couple of extra chuck keys for my Drillmate. FYI - extra keys are available from the Milescraft website by clicking on Products, Drilling / Precision Drilling, 1318 - Drillmate, View Replacement Parts. Inexpensive, nicely made, versatile, a quality of work improving device, this Drillmate. Yet another tool I wish I had picked up a long time ago.

I purchased the Milescraft 1318 DrillMate Portable Drilling Guide to help with more accurate drilling, and overall it does exactly what it’s designed to do. It keeps the drill straight and makes it much easier to drill precise vertical holes compared to freehand drilling. The guide is easy to set up and works well with a standard handheld drill. The adjustable depth stop is a nice feature and helps keep hole depth consistent. It’s especially useful for light woodworking projects, shelving, dowels, and other jobs where accuracy matters.

Great item. Works very well. Easy to connect and adjust. Very stable setup. The size is totally manageable. Made from rigid and durable metal material. Provides great stability for your drilling. Looks as awesome as it works. This material will lase a long time.

I bought this out of curiosity. I find I use it a lot. I do not have a shop so my projects are done inside on a table or outside where ever. I used to have a woodworking shop at my previous house and I do miss my regular shop tools. I find the accuracy to be good. Stores small, lightweight but solid and well designed. Well designed useful base with V groves for round stock. For small projects and portability this DrillMate does well. At this price point, I wish I had purchased one long ago. Disadvantages: No drill through base so anything you drill has to fit between the bit and the base. With my battery drill, or any drill, this tool is top heavy and will try to fall over when you take your hand off the drill. Just be aware and hold on to it or secure it with a clamp. Considered drilling two holes in the base so I could screw it down to a base, but as yet haven't. That is an option. Would I buy it: Yes. Would I recommend it: Yes. It is Not a drill press, but it does a good job for it's capabilities. Even when I buy another drill press, this Drillmate will still be worth having.

This is a GUIDE NOT A DRILL PRESS! For quick jobs, this fit the porter cable and the craftsman drills. It is sturdy and very well built. The angles can be finicky to work with and not the greatest but for the most part the accuracy was down to the .005 of an inch. A super time saver for those super quick jobs. This is a must for the tool Shop or if you need quick easy fun gifts for the woodworker in your life. The parts were stable, heavy duty and will be able to withstand a lot of use. The base is stable and flat leaving it for a perfect drill each time. The springs were durable. Pretty impressed on the performance of this tool. The handles was a plastic kind, but it withheld pressure and was sturdy enough it did not break for keeping the stability as you drilled. It had to be rocked a few times to get started but once in it didn’t job. A great quality tool for a decent reasonable price

I really tried to like this thing, it's built well and seems to be a fairly quality tool. However, after several months I have now screwed up three guitar bodies trying to make proper use of it (practiced on countless pieces of scrap getting familiar with it). It works pretty well for straightness once the hole is started, but it's almost impossible to get centered and started because the whole thing is top-heavy, wobbles, and jerks when the drill bit starts to catch. The spring is constantly resisting against the user (and it is NOT a smooth vertical track, even when lubricated) so it's a pretty aggressive process, all of which adds up to fractions of an inch of movement, which is NOT ok for perfectly-aligned string furls (which is why I got this to begin with). I have yet to succeed with this thing, as much as I've tried to like it.. it's going into the cupboard until I can find a low-precision job for it. In my experience, it is not suited for guitar building, it's just too clumsy and I don't need any assistance with being clumsy :) I have 30 years experience with woodworking, so I'm not a newb, and perhaps others have better success with this - I can do better taking my time with a hand drill for things that don't fit on my drill press.

Like many, I have a small work area that can't possibly accommodate a huge set of large tools. But as some of my projects get more ambitious, things like precision drilling seem beyond useful, but almost required. In steps this Milescraft drill guide. Pretty simple, a chuck and bit on springed rails. Cheap, fairly easy to assemble and use, and works okay. Is it overly precise? Well, that depends on your prep/setup, your grip and how stable the item is that you're drilling, since you set this on top of (or against) the item to be drilled to use it. With a lot of care, one can do quite a good job. But if you need to be absolutely precise, I would look to a proper drill press. Despite touting its metal components, this item has a lot of plastic parts and doesn't have quite the same strength and flex tolerance as bigger tools do. I find the rails don't really slide very easily, and I've tried to clean and lubricate all the moving parts. I probably wouldn't use it for angles and non-flat surfaces without several tests first. Most annoyingly, there is no place to store the chuck key, so make sure to put it somewhere where you will remember it. If I'm being overly critical of such an inexpensive item, it's only because I want to emphasize realistic expectations. This will do just fine for probably two-thirds to 75% of what most people want or need. And the tool doesn't pretend to be anything more. My suggestion is just to be very realistic about that other quarter to third of jobs you need to do, and whether this is an adequate solution.

If you need a tool that will see a *lot* of use, it may not hold up as a daily tool: The slide bushings will wear out, the rotary bearings can't be serviced (easily if at all), the thumbturns for tightening and adjusting may not handle over-torqueing. I do not mean to say it's a bad tool -- It does the job, and does a pretty good job, especially for this price. The components I mentioned above are adequate and will last the occasional user perhaps a decade or two, especially if used by a thoughtful, careful person. It is not a piece of junk by any means, and some parts are even quite well made -- it is merely not going to last long in daily use in a production environment. All this being said, if you need an ad hoc way to drill a reasonably straight & level hole in place and in odd locations, you're not going to find a better way to do it than using this tool. I give it five stars because as long as you don't try to use the tool to be something it isn't, it's a fine tool, and I've found it extremely useful more than once inside the first week of having it. A bonus is that it breaks down for storage reasonably quickly. If you need something to use in lieu of a benchtop drill press, this might work for you if you really, honestly, rarely need to use a drill press and have very limited needs. The bearings on mine are tight and not fantastically smooth, so you may have trouble with a low-power drill (12V minimum, but shoot for higher.)