Friggin granite tryin to have me beat and stop me from making my own Colin Furze tunnel system...

My tools are crying in pain. They don't much appreciate the solid granite bedrock. I only get about a dozen holes per 4 flute carbide hammer drill bit before they fall apart. It's just costing too much at this point.

I was thinking if I only had a through hole cooled drill bit or something, they'd last for so much longer. But that ain't exactly something I can get off the local Harbor Freight equivalent. I could probably find something off the interwebs, except I'm not sure what to search for to find it. Surely there's gotta be something like it?

Sure, there are the professional hydraulic drill setups and whatnot, but I'm not spending $3000 for it... It's gotta be within shits and giggles budget. Any suggestions?

Girthy

Old unitized tractors.... Where heaviness is next to godliness. Where the manufacturer understands that the owners of the tractor will abuse it, misuse it, and ultimately blame the mfg when it breaks..

Let he who has found Torque rejoice. For those blessed with Twist shall inherit the woes of man and the adoration of women.

I saw this in the movie V/H/S/Beyond and immediately thought of this sub

Looking for some good basics of machining videos for new engineering grads in a mechanical design role designing with no machine shop experience.

I've decided I want to dig a tunnel. Or a cave. It's not too important. I just wanna do it because I'm an irrational man and it feels good. There's a rock face behind my house and I want it to be a tunnel instead.

It's a little... strenous, because... it's solid granite bedrock. The location is not accessible to machinery other than hand held tools.

I'm just looking for some general tips to progress faster. Right now, I'm using a 12 Joule hammer drill to drill 16 mm holes, into which I drive 20 mm round chisels with said hammer drill to crack the rock. Sometimes I switch it up making 20 mm holes and then shoving 30 mm chisels into he holes with my 60 Joule jack hammer. This has been the quickest way to progress the fastest so far, but it's still quite slow going. I can rarely break off more than a fist sized rock at a time. Plus, I'm going through drill bits at an alarming rate and it's kinda starting to get expensive lol. They rarely last longer than a couple of dozen holes before the carbide tip starts falling apart on me.

I've tried expanding rock cracking cement, but that was a huge letdown. It doesn't seem to generate more cracking force than a chisel does, and just takes waaaaay longer.

I also used a diy flame thrower which worked quite well. It's not your typical kind, more like a furnace burner/jet engine lol, 200 kW. In the end it's roughly equivalent in speed to drilling and chiseling though, but with the added hassle of being constantly showered by very very hot tiny rock fragments which isn't a great time overall.

I've considered using my big angle grinder and diamond disc to make deep cuts for cracking but it throws so much damn dust everywhere that I'm kinda reluctant...

I want to use feathers and wedges, but it's been absolutely hopeless to source any of a reasonable cost and size...

Are there other methods I should try? I'm hesitant about explosives because it's just a few feet from my house.

Even stupid ideas are welcome. I'm just having fun with it after all!

A while back, I sifted through archive.org for scans of Popular Mechanics DIY Encylopedia. The most complete versions were the 1968 version - which I managed to cobble together into an all-in-one, 2GB monstrosity - and the 1955 version, which I frankensteined into a 0.7GB all-in-one-but-missing-vital-organs thing. Like the title says, couldn't track down volumes 5 & 7, back when I was first doing this a year ago. If anyone's got some high-quality scans lying around...

Felt the need to buy it, figured you guys would appreciate it….now anyone have an idea of what I should do with it?