Which Drill Bit Sharpener Brand Wins?
We compared 7 drill bit sharpener options head to head. Drill Doctor 750X came out on top. See the measured results, the runner-up, the budget pick, and a link to the full test video.
Drill Doctor 750X
Price shown in test: $128.99
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General Tools drill grinding attachment
Price shown in test: $21.59
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The measured results
Every number below is read straight from the test. Scroll sideways to see all measurements. Products are listed in the order they finished.
| Product | Spec | Time to sharpen, 118 deg standard point | Time to sharpen, 135 deg split point | Drilling test at 77 lb force, half-inch mild steel, 118 deg bit | Drilling test at 77 lb force, 135 deg split point bit | Drilling test at 120 lb force, 118 deg bit | Drilling test at 120 lb force, 135 deg split point bit | Time to sharpen | Drilling test at 77 lb force, half-inch mild steel | Drilling test at 120 lb force |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Drill Doctor 750X$128.99 | sharpens to 118 degrees standard, or 135 degrees with a split point (one notch to the right); comes with a storage bag | under 2 minutes, called the fastest sharpening time of all units tested | took quite a bit more time than the standard point, exact figure not given | 1 minute 30 seconds (recap figure: 96 seconds, a small discrepancy from the roughly-90-second spoken figure, kept as stated rather than reconciled) | 1 minute 21 seconds (recap figure: 81 seconds), described as very impressive | 49 seconds | 40 seconds | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 2General Tools drill grinding attachment (bench grinder accessory)$21.59 | requires a separate bench grinder; handles 1/8 to 3/4 in (3 to 19 mm) bits | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | quick, but the narrator overheated/discolored the drill from being too aggressive with the grinder | 1 minute 51 seconds (the first time-to-beat baseline among the sharpened bits) | 50 seconds |
| 3Goodsmann$44.99 | 1/8 to 25/64 in (3 to 10 mm) range | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | about 8 minutes, described as definitely faster than Chicago Electric's 15 minutes | 1 minute 21 seconds (a new best time at that point, beating General Tools' 1:51) | 31 seconds, described as a very impressive job, second fastest of all bits tested including the DeWalt reference bit |
| 4Bosch$98.93 | 2.5 to 10 mm range, sharpens to 118 degrees; unusually, this sharpener is powered by the user's own hand drill rather than having its own motor | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | pretty quick, around 5 minutes | 2 minutes 4 seconds | 53 seconds, described as much better than the first attempt |
| 5Chicago Electric$29.99 (at Harbor Freight) | handles bit sizes 9/64 to 25/64 in, sharpens carbon steel and high-speed steel bits, 120 grit stone | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | about 15 minutes for one twist drill, described as a little on the slow side; narrator also reported difficulty getting the grinding stone height to properly contact the bit per the printed instructions | did better than the Drill Master but still did not do a good job; per the closing recap, 'neither one of the Harbor Freight sharpened drills were able to get the job done' | not retested in the transcript; appears to have been dropped from the second round, likely because it already failed to complete the first drilling test, not a transcript/caption gap |
| 6Drill Master$4.99 (stated as the cheapest of the six sharpeners) | sharpens twist drill sizes 2 mm up to 12.5 mm and 5/64 up to 1/2 in, 100 grit grinding stone, requires a power drill running 2,000 to 3,500 RPM | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | took a while to figure out how to use; the narrator had to rotate the bit during sharpening (deviating from the stated procedure) to form the leading edge and chisel, and the result still did not look great | did not do a good job; per the closing recap, 'neither one of the Harbor Freight sharpened drills were able to get the job done' | the resulting hole was about the same depth as the first attempt, i.e. still did not meaningfully drill through despite the extra 40 lb of force |
| 7DeWalt (factory-sharpened reference bit, not a sharpener under test)$15 (price of the DeWalt drill bit set the reference bit came from, not a sharpener price) | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | 43 seconds as first stated, though the closing recap gives 41 seconds for the same test; both figures kept, not reconciled, a minor internal discrepancy | 23 seconds, the fastest of every bit tested including all six sharpened bits |
How it was tested
- time to sharpen a twist drill bit (excluding equipment setup time)
- resulting sharpened-bit drilling speed through half-inch mild steel at 77 lb downward force
- resulting sharpened-bit drilling speed through half-inch mild steel at 120 lb downward force
- visual quality of the resulting leading edge and chisel
- ease of use / learning curve
“The Drill Doctor, in my opinion, is by far the best sharpener we tested, but it's also the most expensive.”
Data notes and caveats
Six drill bit sharpener brands tested (Drill Doctor, General Tools, Goodsmann, Bosch, Chicago Electric, Drill Master), plus a factory-pre-sharpened DeWalt bit used purely as a speed benchmark/reference, not as a competing sharpener (excluded from winner/runnerUp/budgetPick consideration since the category is drill bit sharpeners, not twist drill bits). No explicit numeric 1st/2nd/3rd leaderboard was given for the sharpeners as a whole the way some other Project Farm videos do, so runnerUp is left null rather than inferred from qualitative praise; product rank order in this file follows the totality of the narrator's own qualitative and quantitative statements (Drill Doctor best overall; General Tools explicitly called a great value; Goodsmann's drilling results were strong but its sharpening process was called very slow with a limited size range; Bosch moderate; Chicago Electric and Drill Master both explicitly failed to produce a bit sharp enough to complete the drilling test). Two small internal numeric discrepancies flagged rather than corrected: the DeWalt reference bit's first drilling time is stated as both 43 and 41 seconds, and the Drill Doctor 118-degree drilling time is stated as both about 90 seconds ('1 minute 30 seconds') and 96 seconds in the closing recap. Chicago Electric was not retested in the second (120 lb) drilling round; treated as a likely consequence of its first-round failure rather than a caption gap, since Drill Master (the other failed sharpener) WAS retested and still failed.