Making a Blowhole - Making a Blowhole

PROJECT BLOWHOLE

Securely place the hole saw in your CORDED drill, and make sure its tight. The reason I say corded drill, is that depending on the quality and gauge of the steel in your case, this isn't a job that can be handled by that 9.6v Black and Decker special. We used a 1/3 horse power drill in this project, and it still choked a bit with the task, so make sure your drill is up to it!

Now simply put the hole saw bit into your pilot hole and hold on. Now make damn sure you have your case panel secured well, because when that hole saw takes a bite, its gonna wanna jump on ya. Make certain that you have the drill at full speed by the time you get the hole saw to the metal, apply even and stern pressure to the drill and keep a VERY firm grip on the drill.

Now the case we used was an Aopen HX08 and it had some thick ass steel, so this was quite a task on this thing. About halfway thru you should see the hole all the way thru in some spots and pretty damn thin in others. Something like this:

Line the drill back up with the hole and let her rip again giving extra attention to the sides that haven't gone thru yet. As you feel it completely give way keep the drill at full power and run it up and down a few times to knock off any hanging edges.

At this point I would recommend returning to that six pack and have a cold one. You have just put a BIG ASS hole in the side (or top) of your box, you deserve it!

As you can see in the above pics, this makes one hell of a mess. Now you have a much better idea of why we said to completely strip the case before doing this. Take whatever means you prefer and clean up your panel a good bit. We have more mess to make with it but with all the metal shavings hanging around, your begging for trouble. The edges of the hole will be VERY sharp, so be careful when you are cleaning it. You can ask SpeedfreakZ just how sharp they are, he knows from personal experience!

Once you get it cleaned off, you are gonna notice that the edges of the hole is very rough and sharp (as we mentioned above!!), so what we need to do is smooth it out a bit. We have used two different ways to accomplish this here in the OCA Secret Lab. One is a metal file and the other is the ever useful Dremel Tool. We prefer the Dremel by far, but have had success with the file, it was just a bit more work.

As you can see below, I just used the sanding stone bit for the Dremel and lightly worked my way around the upper edge of the hole at an angle:

This should smooth the top of any burrs and edges. Be careful not to push to hard or you'll take off some of the paint, and we don't want that. After all, we do want this thing to look cool.

Once you have the outer side complete, do the same with the inside. Then you want to take the side of the stone and run it around the inside of the hole. You want a lot of pressure with this, we are trying to make that edge not so much of a lethal weapon. One thing to note if you are using a Dremel for this, DO NOT hold the Dremel in one place too long, it WILL eat away at the metal and muck it all up. That Dremel is one bad mofo!

Ok, you now have that once deadly hole as smooth as a baby's bottom. Its time to drill the screw holes...

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