Mail-In Resharpening Without the Mystery
A lot of shops have questions before they try a mail-in service for the first time. Who's actually grinding the drills? What happens if one is too far gone to save? How long does it take? What do I pack them in?
This post walks through the complete MachinistPost process from start to finish — no surprises, no vague promises. Here's exactly what happens from the moment you decide to send in a drill to the moment you get it back.
Step 1: Decide What to Send
MachinistPost resharpens HSS (high-speed steel) twist drills. Standard jobber-length, stub length, and extended-length drills all qualify. The practical range is 1/8" diameter and up — very small drills (under 1/8") require specialized grinding fixtures that are outside the service scope.
Assess your drill inventory before packing. Drills that are chipped, have visible heat damage (dark blueing at the tip), drill slowly, require excessive force, or are walking on entry are candidates. Don't discard worn drills before sending — a drill that looks too far gone is often still well within resharpen range. The web grows thicker relative to diameter with each resharpen, but there's typically significant usable length remaining even on heavily used drills.
There's a $20 order minimum — and orders under 20 drills carry a small-batch surcharge that Pro Members skip. Send a batch and the economics work strongly in your favor.
Step 2: Package and Ship
Packaging is simple but matters — drills shipped loose will damage each other and arrive in worse condition than they left. Use any of the following:
- Original drill index (remove the drills and wrap the index)
- Individual compartments in a small parts organizer box
- Wrapped individually in bubble wrap or foam and packed snugly in a small flat-rate box
- A small cardboard tube or pill bottle works well for a handful of same-size drills
Label or note what you're sending and include your return address. No formal order form is required — a slip of paper with your name, address, and any special instructions is enough. If you have a specific request (e.g., "these are for stainless, prefer a more conservative relief angle"), write it down.
Ship via any carrier: USPS, UPS, FedEx. Priority Mail small flat-rate boxes work well for cost. MachinistPost is in Perry, Oklahoma — central location for reasonable transit times nationwide.
Step 3: Receive and Inspect
When drills arrive at MachinistPost, they're inspected before grinding. Each drill is measured for diameter, checked for cracks or structural damage, and assessed for how much material removal the resharpen will require.
This inspection step matters. A drill that's been run until it work-hardened the tip, or one that has a crack from a previous snap-and-re-use attempt, isn't a good candidate for resharpening. Grinding a cracked drill would produce a tool that might fail in use. If a drill can't be safely or effectively resharpened, you'll be told — it won't be ground and returned as if it were fine.
Drills that are too short to safely hold and regrind — typically anything under about 1.5" of usable flute length remaining — are also flagged rather than ground.
Step 4: Regrind on the WinsloMatic
Grinding is done on a Giddings & Lewis WinsloMatic, a dedicated drill point grinder designed for precision resharpening of twist drills. This isn't a bench grinder with a drill attachment — it's a purpose-built machine that controls point angle, lip relief angle, and concentricity simultaneously.
The WinsloMatic uses cam-guided geometry to ensure both cutting lips are ground to identical length and angle. Asymmetric lips — one lip longer than the other, or different relief angles on each side — are a common failure mode of hand or improvised sharpening, and they produce drills that drill oversize and walk on entry. The fixture-controlled grind eliminates this.
Web thinning is performed as part of the standard regrind on every drill. The chisel edge is relieved to bring the effective web thickness back toward original spec, reducing required thrust force and improving self-centering on entry. This is not an optional add-on — it's included because a resharpen without web thinning produces a drill that won't perform like new.
Step 5: Quality Check
After grinding, each drill is checked: point angle, lip symmetry, lip relief, and visual inspection of the cutting edges under magnification. The goal is a drill that meets or exceeds new-drill geometry — not just one that has a sharper edge than it arrived with.
Drills that don't pass inspection are reground. If a drill can't be brought to spec — usually because too much material was removed in a previous poor grind and the geometry is compromised beyond correction — it's set aside and the customer is notified rather than returned as acceptable.
Step 6: Ship Back
Resharpened drills are packed and returned to the address you provided. Typical turnaround from receipt to ship-back is measured in days — not weeks, not "allow 4–6 weeks." Production volume and current queue can affect this, but the goal is fast enough to be practical for working shops that can't have tooling out of service indefinitely.
Return shipping is included in the per-drill pricing. No surprise fees at the end for postage.
Pricing
Resharpening starts at $3.00 per drill for letter sizes, up to $7.00 for the largest drills we take (1/2"–3/4"). Current pricing is listed on the MachinistPost website. There is a $20 order minimum, no setup fee, and no charge for drills that are assessed and determined to be unsharpenable — you only pay for drills that are successfully resharpened and returned.
What You Get Back
A drill that drills like new. Same diameter — resharpening removes material from the tip, not the body, so the drill cuts its original size. Proper point geometry with web thinning. Both lips symmetric. Clean cutting edges.
You also get your drill back rather than a new one — which means your existing drill index stays complete, your drill sizes stay sorted and labeled (if you labeled them), and you don't have to source a replacement. For shops maintaining indexed sets of number and letter drills, this is particularly valuable: those sizes aren't always on the shelf at the local industrial supply.
Getting Started
There's no account to set up and no contract to sign — just a $20 order minimum. Collect your worn drills, pack them, include your name and return address, and ship to MachinistPost in Perry, Oklahoma. That's the whole process.
If you have questions before sending your first batch, contact information is on the website. But for most shops, the fastest way to know if the service works for you is to send in a batch of drills you'd otherwise be throwing away and see what comes back.