I had a small Christmas break project that may be worth reporting.

It has always driven me a bit crazy using the DRDT-2 on large pieces. I had a tendency to fish around trying to get the die to mate with the rivet hole, putting small scratches on the piece. So I decided to make a laser sight.

I think there are various ways to accomplish this task, this is what I chose:

Step 1: Acquire Laser. In this case, a Drill Press laser sight from Amazon for $40.

Step 2: Epoxy rare earth magnets to the case of the laser. I used rare earth because they’re thinner. This thing already sticks down into the neck space of the DRDT enough.

Step 3: Attach the laser to the DRDT and adjust. The laser is fully adjustable but I think the easiest thing to do is get it roughly adjusted then just move it around slightly until the X hits the dimple die.

As I said above, it does stick down into the open neck of the DRDT a little, maybe an inch or so. It may not be usable for anything other than large flat pieces but if I want to remove it, I’ll just take it off and the magnets will stick it to the top of the DRDT where I store some Dies, etc.

After I ordered the laser sight, I saw something online that gave me another idea for a solution that may be better. You could just use a regular office laser pointer with a magnetic helping hand (the kind they use in electronics and stuff to help solder). The only trick there would be devising something to keep the button pushed but I’m sure something could be worked out. That would have the advantage of not sticking down into the free space. And since the die doesn’t move up or down, a single laser dot would do the job just fine.

I’ve got some big skins to dimple this weekend so I’ll report back how it does.