Tile and Glass Drill Bit (7mm)

Ordinary glazed ceramic wall tile is relatively soft under its glaze. Get through the glaze and the body behind it drills without much drama. Porcelain is a different material: fired harder and denser all the way through, so there is no soft body behind the surface, and the whole thickness resists the bit. Fully vitrified and polished porcelain is harder again. So is natural stone, and so is toughened glass, which should not be drilled at all once it has been toughened.

The practical consequences are worth having before you start. On porcelain, expect the job to take several times longer, expect to need water or another coolant to keep the tip alive, and expect a bit to do fewer holes than it would in ceramic. None of that means the bit has failed; it means the material is harder. Customers frequently return bits believing them faulty when they have simply met porcelain for the first time.

A rough guide to which you have: ceramic tile usually has a coloured or white body visible at a cut edge and a distinctly different glaze layer on top. Porcelain tends to be the same colour and density right through, and it is noticeably heavier for its size.

Seven millimetres suits larger plugs for heavier fittings, brackets, rails and cabinet fixings.

YG6X cross carbide tip, medium carbon steel shank, 1/4 inch hex shank. Slow speed, keep it cool, no hammer.

Buyers are tilers, bathroom and kitchen fitters, shopfitters, stone and glass trades and hardware shops.

Tell us on 94 77 111 8880 what you are drilling and we will tell you honestly what to expect. Island-wide delivery.