Drilling a Keyhole Slot, the Dummy Version

A keyhole bit for a router

It's bad enough when the Antisocial Network's research staff find rubbish thrown up on content farms by people who are completely unfamiliar with the subject matter, Hell, that's pretty much par for the course; especially in this hot and heavy political season. But things can get worse: the content may be an example of bait and switch (either deliberate or a result of stupidity) or can be an out-and-out failure of logic. We ran across a classic example of the latter in our research, thanks to an eHow.com drone who calls himself Jack Ori. Jack (aka Stephanie Silberstein), whose eHow.com output comprises hundreds of posts, mostly on business, tripped himself up by venturing into woodworking with "How to Make Keyhole Slots With a Drill" (now at Hunker.com).

For how-to articles, Demand Media demands a list of "Things you'll need." For this task, Ori's list (back when the rubbish was at eHow, anyway) is strikingly simple:

• Router
• Keyhole bit
• Wood

It's weird, isn't it, that the title says "with a drill," yet Ori lists a router as the only tool? Yep, folks, Jack – clearly out of his depth when discussing power tools – gives instructions for cutting keyhole slots with a router and keyhole bit, not with a drill. And to make things worse, Ori got the instructions for using a router wrong! Check out this dumbassery:

"Put a square bit into the router. Attach a fence to the router to control how long the slot you drill will be." And then there was this bit of utter bull: "Put the router against the wood, and turn it on. It will slide until it hits the fence, drilling a slot as it goes. Turn the router off, and wait for it to completely stop before removing it from the wood." Clearly, Ori has never used a router, much less a keyhole bit, which even a first-time router user (aka complete idiot) knows isn't "square." If you want useful instructions for using that tool, ask people who know -- not dummies like Ori or the moron content editor who let this through.

In reality you can't use a keyhole bit for a router in a drill or, for that matter, a drill press to make a blind keyhole (the sort shown above, that is invisible from the front of the workpiece). If you want to cut a keyhole slot all the way through the wood and you only have a drill, that's doable: drill an entry hole larger than the screw head, drill a second hole just large enough for the screw shank, and connect the two by cutting a slot with a saw. A coping saw or even a Dremel cutoff wheel would probably do the job.

If you want to know what tipped our researcher off to Ori's bull, you only need to read the first sentence of his introduction:

"When making coat racks, doors or other interior items for your home, it can help to make keyholes with a drill bit. " What either a coat rack or a door has to do with a keyhole slot is a complete mystery to all of us. What isn't a mystery, however, is that Jack Ori was clearly holding forth on a subject with which he had no knowledge. You know what the Antisocial Network does when we find freelancers collecting cash for bullshit like this? Right: we give them the Dumbass of the Day award.

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