Broken Handle on Big Power Drill? Make a new one!

My neato 900W 2 speed - with hammer, drill had a nice handle on the side.

The handle was there to resist the torque of the drill when the bit grabbed - especially on 13mm drills, braking through a hole in steel.

But being under designed (read cheaply made), the handle broke off.

This really got up my nose, because on a 900 W drill, in LOW gear, when the drill grabbed, the natual instinct is to grab the drill harder back and using the drill without the handle, meant that one would squeeze the handle, and the speed control trigger even harder.... thus causing the drill to go to full power and to then twist it's self out of ones hands, to just plain old twist ones hands off... with the complimentary "wrapping of the power cord around ones hand or hands at the same time.

So to have a cheaply made handle on the drill, was kind of like having a kind of loose steering wheel in a car.... it would turn the car as long as you didn't turn the wheel very hard...but if you did..... off it would come.

Not much good.

Also the drill was a kind of cheaply made, as in the rubber sheath that coated the power cord as it came out of the drill body to stop it kinking at that point - that being shit cheap rubber - had broken off ages ago.

The speed control trigger - that was absolute junk, as in the switches in it had over heated, burnt and were loose in the trigger, leading it to make the motor "creep and grunt" as it slowly "ticked over".

Being a 900W drill - that is actually quite dangerous......

And the gearbox was due for a strip, clean and rebuild......

So I gave it "Da Treatment".

Step 1 Making the NEW Handle..

This was a process of:

a) Getting the right sized pieces of wood for the job, being neither too spartan, nor too robust;

b) A couple of appropriately long bolts;

c) A hole saw - that was fortunately for me, more or less the exact size; and

d) Some spoke shaves / sanding tools or similar (files and rasps) to shape the timber with.

With the timber that I had, it was about right for the clamping section, but a bit thin on the handle, so I made the handle wider, by cutting and gluing some timber strips onto the "handle" part of the handle - using my wizard jig saw "saw bench" / "band saw".

http://www.instructables.com/id/A-BRILLIANT--workshop-tool---that-avoids-mostl/

Using a slightly skewed feed and a delicate touch enabled me to make the extra strips to make the handle thicker.