What Drill Bit To Use For A Lintel?

Drilling into lintels can be tough, but it can also be unavoidable and is often a job you have to do when hanging blinds. So what is the best drill bit to use for a lintel? Let me help you out.

What Type Of Lintel?

This is the most important question and one that you might not know the answer to straight away. There are different types of lintel used in different houses. One of the easiest ways to understand what lintel your house has is to look at the exterior.

What sort of material is the exterior lintel made from? If it is solid stone then there is a good chance that large slab of stone runs the full width of your wall.

Steel lintels will be hard to spot as they will be covered, steel lintels are commonly used on brick-built properties, so if you have a row of bricks directly above your doors and windows then there is a good chance you have a steel lintel.

Common lintel materials are concrete and metal, and stone is sometimes used in older properties as is timber. Chances are your lintel will be concrete or metal but I have included the others just so you are aware it is possible.

Wooden lintels are more likely if you have an old cottage or barn conversion, these are the places I have run into them. Stone lintels are very common in older terraced properties.

Drilling Into Concrete Lintels

Drilling into concrete lintels can be tough, sometimes the concrete is incredibly hard and then other times you may hit the metal reinforcement which can really slow you down.

Masonry bits are best used for concrete and you need a drill with a hammer action to help the drill force its way through.

If you are really struggling to even make a dent in the concrete then you may need an SDS drill and bit. These are drills specifically designed for drilling into tough materials, you can find out more about them below.

Drilling Into Metal Lintels

Drilling into a steel lintel isn’t as tough as it sounds, it just requires the right drill bit and a lot of patience.

You want a High Speed Steel HSS bit and, despite the name, you need to drill slowly. Drilling slowly is crucial to stopping the tip of your drill bit from overheating.

As soon as an HSS drill bit overheats it deforms and blunts, they can also snap. So keep it cool, you can do this by using a slow speed on your drill and by also using plenty of lubricant like WD40 while drilling.

Drilling Into Stone Lintels

Stone lintels are one of the easiest to drill into and just need a masonry bit and a hammer action drill or SDS drill.

You can use the same DeWALT drill bits here that I recommended for concrete.

One thing to be careful of with stone lintels, particularly ones made of softer stone is that you don’t make a mess of them and chip larger pieces off.

The best way is to work your way up, starting with a smaller drill bit and then use a larger one once you have already made a hole.

SDS Drill

So what is an SDS drill? SDS stands for Slotted Drive Shaft. The bits that go into an SDS drill are completely different to a regular drill bit in their shaft and this means they are not interchangeable.

The slots on the shaft of an SDS bit allow the drill to move the bit backwards and forward as it drills. This creates a really powerful impact that helps the drill blast through tough material.

They are used for tough masonry like concrete and are more of a professional tool rather than a DIYer tool.

One nice feature of an SDS drill is that you can use it in hammer-only mode, in this mode the shaft won’t spin but will just be powered backwards and forward. This allows the drill to be used like a breaker and as such, chisel and breaker bits are commonly sold for SDS drills.