Drill Bit for Dimpling Stainless Barrel

[RustyIron]

3rd post and to a 2 1/2 year old thread and the question doesn't make sense to me.

The dude has made three posts. Two of them left me scratching my head, just like you. The third post was making wild claims about the benefits of cannabis. Now it ALL makes sense.

In cases like this, I resort to the "ignore" filter.

[SomeOtherGuy]

Can I do the same using an impact driver? It might sound like a silly question but I don't have a lot of tools at home.

It's going to depend on a few factors:
-does your driver have an option to turn the impacts off?
-how fast/powerful a driver is it?
-what are your skills?

Now having drilled some of these, it's very easy on non-nitride steel with a drill press and an appropriate vise. On nitride-treated steel it's more difficult, but you can minimize that with some file work on the spot beforehand (the nitride layer is very thin).

You will need a vise to hold the barrel, and with a hand-held anything you will probably have issues. Be sure to turn the impacts off if possible.

If you have any possible access to a drill press, the proper setup will make this an easy 5-minute or less job with a good result, while doing it handheld is very likely to be messy and may just fail.

the question doesn't make sense to me.

An impact driver is similar to a handheld drill but has different internal gearing and mechanism, optimized for driving screws and nuts instead of drilling. The impact part is like an air impact wrench - a rotary hammer starts pounding on the bit holder when it meets enough resistance. They can be used for light drilling in wood or plastic but aren't optimal for that.