VEVOR Drill Bits Sharpener 3-13mm Portable Sharpening Angle Grinder Mill Grinder Sharpener with 11 Collets For Factory Workshop (WHL #112)
As indicated lately, my drill bit sharpener journey hasn’t ended with the two diamond wheels that I got for free, but instead I bought a more serious tool. Sure, as always, there are way better devices out that can also handle smaller, or bigger, or specialized drills – but I think this one is more than decent for non-commercial use and surely oversized for what I usually do. It’s easy enough to operate every now and then without reading the manual again (and crashing the first drill inserted), and while it could be smaller and lighter, it’s probably is on the lower end of what a durable sharpener has to weigh in order to survive years and decades unfazed.
Meet: The Vevor Drill bit sharpener MR-13B.
Bought in early July for a total of 176.28€ shipped after all the rebate coupons and other Aliexpress nonsense were applied. Ordered with shipping option “from France” (cheapest), actually sent from a “C1GC” company in Neumark, Germany, apparently a major freight forwarder. Shipped faster than any Amazon order in the last couple of years, since I’m not a Prime subscriber at Jeff’s general store.
Now, Vevor is some known unknown company to me, they make all sorts of things from gardening tools over automotive helpers, food/kitchen items, workshop stuff, and I’ve even seen yellow cable protector ramps from them on my latest trip to Eschborn supercharger, where some Bratwurst booth covered up their 400V wiring to protect pedestrians from tripping over them. I’m usually not a big fan of “jack of all trades, master of none” companies, and I cannot generally tell if Vevor is a trustworthy company or just selling cheap shite made in China. Their slogan “Tough Tools Half Price” (with some asterisk to protect against lawsuits from inbreds) also doesn’t instill a lot of confidence, and reddit is full of complaints on how bad customer service is *once* anything breaks.
However, when searching the web for drill bit sharpener reviews in the 100, 200, 300€ range, I stumbled across this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llpmgzTg8_g from a channel called “NBR Works”, and that dude absolutely nailed it by explaining sharpening for the first 30 minutes, and then using the (sponsored!) Vevor tool for the other 30 minutes afterwards. And: As there are three versions of that sharpening tool, namely the
13A:
The 13B:
and the 20G:
He also managed to decide for me which version to get: The 20 is the do-it-all machine for up to 20mm drills at a 500+€ MSRP (clearly way beyond of what I need), and the 13A and 13B are about the same at 320ish € MSRP with basically the same tooling included, but one key difference: The 13A allows for split point cutting, and the 13B allows for web thinning. It’s an either-or situation, unless moving up the price ladder and also getting the larger collets of the 20G machine for basically 13A plus 13B money. Until…you watch the entire video and realize that this guy has created an adapter for 13B machines to emulate what the 13A can do. So the decision is an easy one: Get a 13B machine like NBR, and pay him five bucks for the STL once the need arrives to further tune my drill bits. I haven’t done that yet, but the browser tab to his patreon page with the downloadable files is already open…
So, I would absolutely recommend to watch the entire video of NBR Works, as that’ll explain everything about the machine. And here are some impressions of my unit, which, again, cost me 176€ delivered. Yes, I could have complained about the messed up knurling on the chuck, but according to reddit users that is a futile thing to do, plus it has no sharp edges or something that would make it difficult to use, it’s just an optical imperfection that has absolutely no effect on the grinding quality and I cannot even feel the two misplaced grooves. Returning the entire thing would have worked, with the slight downside that buying again without all the vouchers would make this a 220€-ish machine – and 50 bucks extra for a nicer chuck (plus all the effort in returning) is also not an option. I’m happy with this thing as-is.
Grinding gear flap, secured with just one screw:
Super-low-tech cheapo hinge (but it works!), Super-low-tech cheapo fan blades (also work!)
Drill cutting insert on the bottom (with chuck in place), webbing insert on the top:
Setup point (depth – might be ever so slightly off by a constant value, but horizontal insertion is a matter of practice for large drill diameters anyway, and basically RNG for 3-4mm ones)
The hatch covering the various collets – this badly needs either a redesign of the folded metal, or, like I did, a squishy triangular insert. If you keep it as shipped, all the fucking collets will fall out inside the closed hatch when tipping the unit e.g. during transportation. Might be doing a proper STL for TPU printing one day, but this foam insert is already doing the job. Every collet is marked, but sometimes in tiny font. I might add a bit of color in the future, e.g. like the resistor ring code colors that already work well on my torx bits…
In terms of sharpened drill bits, this is the best I can do without improvising a a drill photography setup that would make my Sony camera reliably focus on the darn tip:
Other impressions of this (I think 9.5mm?) and a 3mm drill bit later on, standing inside a collet because it would tip over immediately on its own:
These might not be perfect cuts, but these are at least ten times better than anything I could do by hand. Super easy to resharpen drills with existing 135° cutting angle, very easy to re-shape drills with other angles (all of my metal drills are now set to 135°). I still don’t know what to do with my wood drills with the centering tip, but I honestly haven’t used a single one of them since my other drills are now so sharp and self-centering, I don’t actually miss them. I also threw away one of the cheap HSS-R ones sized 9,0mm that strangely never got a centered tip – until I realized how insanely bent this thing actually is, which explains why the collet isn’t able to grip it in a centered position. No idea how that happened or if it always was that way, but that was also a good finding.
To wrap it up: Yup, I’d totally buy that thing again and sit once more on the floor for an entire evening, re-grinding and sharpening all of the HSS-R, HSS-G and some HSS-E drills plus some weirdos (Dremel, maybe?) that were probably never intended to end up in a cordless drill. That’s totally my vibe, calms down my inner autistic child, and also yields a box full of very usable drill bits for future DIY adventures. Plus I got to learn about how drills actually work, and could deepen my knowledge further with the split tip accessory as discussed earlier. Sure, 176 bucks buys a lot of shiny new drill bits, but this thing will also keep me going when I do stupid things on a Saturday evening ten minutes after the hardware store has closed. Which, let’s be frank here, will happen again one day, and I will be very happy to just grind another tip in a minute or two, and finish the job.
