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Drill Your Wire Holes Level

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What We Cover in this Article:

  • Make Sure to Drill Level for Easier Wire Pulling

MAKE SURE TO DRILL LEVEL FOR EASIER WIRE PULLING

After you’ve planned your wire routes, an important tip to keep in mind is to make sure you drill your holes fairly level.

So in this quick article, I’ll explain why, and a tip a well-respected journeyman taught me.

The reason we want to drill our holes as level as possible is to reduce friction.

If you’re only pulling wire a short run, you usually have enough strength to pull the wire through the holes, even if the holes aren’t the same height.

But once a wire pull becomes quite long, when your drilled holes are up and down, it increases friction and makes it way harder, if not impossible, to pull your wire through these holes!

Sometimes you can’t avoid drilling your holes way up and down because of the layout of the building, so in these cases, you can simply length off a bunch of wire at these pull spots. This will reset your friction amount, and make your wire pulling a lot easier.

Pulling wire is about speed, and the less you have to go down your ladder, or go back to a spot which is causing you grief, the faster you’ll be.

It’s always easier to pull extra at those pull spots and then pull it back later, or even if you have to waste some wire by accidentally pulling too much, it’s usually way faster and cost effective to waste that bit of wire and pull it straight through so you can complete the task.

DRILLING FROM YOUR THIGH:

It’s hard to know what height you’re drilling at from one hole to the next, so here’s the tip a journeyman taught me:

You can simply place your drill on your upper thigh. That will make your holes all within the same ballpark of each other, making your wire pulling much smoother.

Especially if you’re using a D-Drill, which is pretty common for electricians, you can place this on your upper thigh to keep your holes level.

Milwaukee Corded Drill (HEAVY-DUTY COMPACT HOLE-SHOOTERS)
This is a common Milwaukee Corded Drill. (They come in different speeds.. which means how much torque they can handle.. lower speeds can handle more torque, faster speeds you’d want to use smaller diameter drill bits.. research before buying!)

It’s a simple tip, but very crucial to speed up your wire pulling.

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