TESTED: Levoite drilling guide
Above: Drilling with larger diameter bits is possible by quickly and easily reversing the head of the tool.
Review and photos: Damion Fauser
This vertical drilling guide works. With a standard 1⁄4" hexagonal tool drive shaft it can be driven by pretty well any handheld drill or driver. Made from CNC-machined aluminium with stainless steel guide rods, the build quality is quite good. What appealed to me with this brand over others researched was the fact that is doesn’t tilt, so I wasn’t concerned about any slipping out of perpendicular in use.
The keyed chuck will take 1.5–13mm shanks and therefore is able to work with even large forstner bits (as required for a recent job), but for this you’ll need to reverse the main head of the tool, which is quick and easy to do.
The drill is guided straight down on two rods. One rod has a flat facet machined for positively locking the supplied threaded depth stop. On the other rod is a return spring, but this is really only strong enough for smaller drills and drivers. I used a larger 18V drill and found I needed to support the weight of the tool once mounted to the drilling guide.
Above: Squareness to the surface was tested and found to be very accurate in both X and Y axes.
Out of the box the tool tested perfectly square to the reference surface in both the X and Y axes, with just a small amount of play in the shaft with my heavy drill mounted. I found that by locating the tip of the drill where I needed it, I could slightly nudge the base of the guide over to check for squareness and then clamp in place for a perfectly perpendicular action.
There is a great range of optional accessories available to extend the capability of this tool, including extension rods, flip stops and edge guides. I found this to be a well made and workable solution for a reasonable price point.
Review tool supplied by author. Available from https://levoite.com/
Damion Fauser @damionfauser is a furniture designer maker and woodwork teacher in Brisbane.