Flexbar Optical Punch Set

Tools (Recommended):
Flexbar Optical Punch Set ($50 + Shipping)
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Transcript:
Hi, I'm Sean Michael Ragan for Cool Tools, and in today's video, I wanna tell you about the bestdeal going on an optical punch set. Stay tuned! This is an automatic punch. This is a traditional-style punch. And this is an optical punch. All three serve the same essential function, which is to mark a drilling center on a piece of stock. The punch makes a little divot that keeps the bit from wandering off while you're starting the hole, which standard twist drills are otherwise prone to do. It follows that your ability to accurately drill holes is limited by your ability to accurately place your punch. Here the optical punch has three advantages. First, better visibility. With a traditional punch, both the tool and your hand tend to get in the way, making it hard to see what you're doing at the critical moment of alignment. Whereas with an optical punch, visibility is unimpeded. Second, there's magnification. The lens on a typical optical punch gives about eight-power zoom, which makes it much easier to get lined up exactly over the intersection of your layout lines. This particular optical punch comes with both crosshair and dot-and-circle reticules. I personally prefer crosshairs but there are good arguments both ways. Third, the optical punch eliminates parallax errors, because you don't have to look from the side to line it up. And here I want to clear up a common misconception. Some people think that when you're using an optical punch you have to be very careful to get your eye lined up exactly over the center of the lens to prevent parallax, but that's not true. If you look at the bottom of this lens, you can see that the reticule is right at the very end, which means the crosshairs you see when you look through it are lying right on top of your target, so there's no parallax between them at all. As long as you can see the crosshairs and the layout marks well enough to line them up, it doesn't matter where you put your eye. Under the microscope, the practical advantage of using an optical punch is easy to see. Here are the punch marks you saw me make in the opening shot, here are the pilot holes I drilled over them, and here are the finish-diameter holes. Optical punch sets are designed for high-precision work, which means they tend to beexpensive. This one by SPI sells for $75; here's one by Travers that gets $90; and here's one by Fowler that goes for $115. But this little kit from Flexbar is relatively inexpensive at just fifty bucks. It comes in a plastic clamshell case with a foam insert, again with two lenses, one crosshair and one dot-and-circle, and also with two punches: there's this 120-degree cone (which is technically the "center" punch), and there's also this sharper 60-degree cone, which is for punching layout marks rather than drill centers. OK, thank you for watching! As always, you'll find affiliate links down below. We'll see you next time!
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