Quote Originally Posted by Eric Brown View Post
Pat, think about chopping a tree. You don't go at it straight on but at an angle. It comes down to compression. If you chop straight at it the wood has to compress on both sides of the axe until the wood can't compress any more. Now when you chop at an angle the outside portion has a place to go. Same thing happens with a low angle plane vs a regular plane when going across end grain. Now look at the pointy type of drill again and you can see that it is cutting very oblique to the grain and the fast spiral lifts the chips out. Regular augers have a steeper cutting angle and is more like a regular plane. Make sense?
Yes, I suppose that does make sense. I have never actually seen one of those. Thanks for the info.