Welcome to the home of "The Original" 10FtDrillBit!

Since I began selling 10FtDrillBits on-line, I have had several funny things happen.

One Customer asked me if you could put 2 of them together? For 20 feet? Yes, they would connect, but I had no way of testing how it would work.  He had a job to add a new circuit to an upstairs bathroom in an older house. He said it would take him 4 days to open the plaster walls, run the required conduit, and then repair the walls. He thought using the 10FtDrillBit would save him some time. I offered him a discount on the second one if he wanted to try it on the condition that he let me know what happened.

 

I didn't hear from him for several days, so I assumed the worst. Finally, he sent the letter and pictures that you can see on my Testimonials page. It worked and saved him 3 days work. It is really nice to hear things like that, to know you helped solve a problem and make life easier for someone.

 

Read about it here: http://10ftdrillbit.com/testimonials.aspx.

 

I thought about trying to sell them for several days and then discussed with my wife. To my surprise, she said "You ought to do it!". That very week-end I found a discontinued cut-off saw and bought it for a good price. A good sign, in my opinion. I researched welders and bought a terrific, small Miller MIG welder and reworked my original design. After several re-designs, I was ready to start building them!  

 

 

 

 

Using Microsoft's Office Live, I created a web site for my drill bit business. It was simple, but it did what I needed. I figured out how to use PayPal's Merchant Services to create Add to Cart buttons and opened a UPS account. All of this on-line, easy to do, and practically free. And then, there was an ad about StartupNation's 100 Home Based Businesses. They asked if I wanted to submit my website to their contest. Thinking, I have nothing to lose, I did. In a few weeks, I learned that I had won Second in the Wackiest category. Oh well, I didn't get a computer or a grand prize award, but I did get lots of traffic to my site. (http://www.startupnation.com/NET_ROOT/print_template/PrintContent.aspx?content_id=8960)

 

More than 10 years ago, I wanted to install network cable in my house, mostly to all my kid's bedrooms, so when they came home from college they could plug their computers in and be on-line. This is before wireless became so simple, secure, and popular. Because I built the house, I knew the difficulty in fishing wires in the 9' walls. I had made sure to put cross-braces in every wall. So I went to the local hardware stores and tool rental places and asked "Do you have long drill bits?". "Sure", they said. "We have up to 18 inches". When I replied that was not long enough, they naturally asked how long did I need? Ten feet. Of course they just laughed at me.

 

My brother said you could find that anywhere, so I challenged him to find one. He found the usual 4' to 5' electrician's extended bits, but nothing that would go all the way through a story of a house.

 

So I built one. I made it in 3 sections so you could easily drill in the attic with minimum head room. I used carter keys and couplings and found it did exactly what I wanted. Over the years my neighbors and friends borrowed my "10 foot drill bit" for their projects. And there were many good laughs about the the whole idea. In 2007, one of my co-workers was running some can lights in his house and we talked about the "10 foot drill bit". He is the one who insisted I start making them and selling on the internet.