January: Full Inventory Audit. The year starts with an accurate count of what you have. Pull every drill from the crib, bins, and machine drawers. Record sizes and quantities. Check condition on a sample from each size bin — look at cutting lips under a loupe, check for chips, check shank condition. This is the baseline for the year.
While you're at it, throw away drills that are obviously done: bent shanks, cracked flutes, worn below minimum usable length for your work. Keeping them in the crib creates confusion and means someone will reach for a scrap drill when they need a working one.
Output: a list of what you have, what's in good condition, what needs reconditioning, and what needs replacement.
February: First Reconditioning Send-Off. Based on the January audit, package up everything that needs reconditioning. This is the year's first scheduled send-off — not emergency reconditioning triggered by a broken drill, but planned maintenance on tools identified as candidates during the audit.
Include the full condition notes: sizes, estimated use history, any special geometry requirements (specific point angles, web thinning on heavily used drills). A good reconditioning service can give you better results when you tell them what you need rather than dropping a bin of drills with no context.
March: Establish or Review Tracking System. If you don't have a drill log, March is the time to start one. If you do, review it: is anyone actually updating it? Are the fields capturing useful data? Is the tracking threshold calibrated to your actual experience? Make any adjustments before the second quarter.
April: Coolant System Check. Coolant quality has a direct effect on drill life. Check concentration across all machines where drilling is done — this is a five-minute task with a refractometer. Top off or mix fresh as needed. Drain and replace any sumps that have high tramp oil content or show biological contamination. Filter clean-out where applicable.
Drill life in shops with degraded coolant can be 30–50% shorter than in shops with properly maintained coolant. April check prevents summer-heat deterioration from starting unnoticed.
May: Mid-Year Wear Tracking Review. Pull your tracking data from Q1 and Q2. Are drills lasting as long as expected? If certain sizes or materials are chewing through tooling faster than the baseline, that's a signal to investigate: feeds and speeds, coolant delivery at those machines, operator technique.
If any sizes are consistently being emergency-replaced rather than reaching a planned reconditioning interval, that's a workflow problem to fix before the second half of the year.
June: Second Scheduled Reconditioning. Second quarterly send-off. By now you have roughly six months of use on the drills that came back from February reconditioning. Anything that's hit its target hole count or shows wear in the tracking log goes in this batch.
July: Fixture and Clamping Audit. For shops doing production drilling, July is a good time to inspect the fixtures and clamping systems that hold parts at the drilling stations. Locator wear, inconsistent clamp force, and loose V-blocks all accelerate drill wear by allowing workpiece movement. Replacing worn locators is cheap; it extends drill life noticeably.
August: Small-Drill Dedicated Review. Drills under 3/16" have different failure modes than standard-range drills — they snap rather than gradually dulling, and the snap often happens without much warning. Pull all small-diameter drills from active use and inspect them. Retire any that show any visible damage. Reconditioning small drills is economical; running them to failure in the middle of a job is not.
September: Third Reconditioning Send-Off. The third quarterly batch. By now you have nine months of the tracking system running, and the pattern of which sizes need more frequent service should be clear. Use that data to adjust the next send-off timing if any sizes are cycling faster or slower than initially estimated.
October: Pre-Holiday Inventory Buffer. If your shop slows down in late November and December, October is the time to make sure your working inventory is in good shape. Send a resharpen batch before the holiday slowdown, not during it. Coming back in January with a full crib of reconditioned tooling is much better than starting the year with a depleted inventory.
November: Year-End Audit Prep. Same exercise as January, but done in advance of year-end so you have accurate tooling inventory numbers for any financial or equipment reporting. Note the condition distribution — what percentage of inventory is in good condition, what percentage is pending reconditioning, what percentage has been retired this year.
December: Document and Adjust for Next Year. Write down what changed this year versus the plan. Which intervals worked? Which didn't? Did any machine, material, or application emerge as harder on drills than expected? Were there any failure modes that weren't anticipated?
Update the calendar for next year with those adjustments. The first year of a structured program is calibration. The second year runs smoother. By the third year, you'll have enough data to predict tooling costs and plan the annual tooling budget with meaningful accuracy.
Print it out, put it in the tool crib binder, or add the tasks to whatever scheduling system your shop uses. The specific dates matter less than the cadence — quarterly reconditioning batches, monthly spot checks, and an annual full audit. The whole program takes less time per year than the post-mortem on a single production stoppage caused by a broken drill in an expensive part.
Start with what you can actually do. Even doing just the quarterly reconditioning batches — even without full tracking — is a significant improvement over purely reactive tool management. The goal is a system that runs in the background, not a project that requires constant attention.
Mail in your dull HSS drills. We'll sharpen them on our WinsloMatic — back to spec, ready to cut.
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