How to Drill Wood Without Splintering

Clamp a piece of scrap underneath the workpiece and swap to a brad point bit. That is the answer to most of this, it costs almost nothing, and it works on the first try. The scrap means the bit exits into wood instead of into air, so there is nothing for the last fibers to break away from; the brad point means the rim of the hole is cut by two outer spurs rather than torn by the flutes.

Everything else on this page is for the cases where that is not enough: a show face you cannot back up, veneered plywood that chips, thin stock that splits, and screws that crack a board nowhere near where you drilled.

It is worth separating three failures that all get called “splintering,” because they have different causes and different fixes.

• Tear-out on the entry face— a fuzzy halo around the rim. Cause: bit geometry. Fix: a brad point or a Forstner.
• Blowout on the exit face— a chunk missing, often bigger than the hole. Cause: unsupported fibers plus feed pressure. Fix: a backer board, or drilling from both faces.
• Splitting— a crack running with the grain, usually from a screw rather than from the drill. Cause: a wedge driven into material that has nowhere to go. Fix: the right pilot hole, and distance from the end of the board.

Why a twist bit tears wood and a brad point does not

A drill bit does not scoop material out; it severs fibers and evacuates chips, and the order of those two events is everything. A twist bit has a conical point whose cutting lips meet in the middle, so in wood it reaches the center of the hole first and the rim last. By the time anything cuts the rim, the flutes have already lifted those fibers upward — which is the fuzz you are looking at.

A brad point reverses the order. The center spur locates the bit in your mark, the two raised outer spurs score the circumference, and only then do the horizontal lips remove waste from inside the scored ring. Cut fibers cannot be lifted, so the edge stays crisp. A Forstner takes the same idea further with a continuous circular rim that scores the entire circumference, which is why it leaves the cleanest hole of anything that fits a chuck.

None of this is a quality difference between bits. It is a geometry difference, and the full comparison is in brad point vs twist drill bits.

The backer board, in detail, because the details matter

“Put scrap underneath” is advice everyone gives and half of people implement in a way that does not work. Three conditions:

• No gap.The scrap has to be in contact with the workpiece at the hole. A board resting on two sawhorses with scrap floating under it somewhere else achieves nothing — the fibers need support at the exact point of exit.
• Clamped, both pieces together. Any movement between the two surfaces reintroduces the gap mid-cut, and a spinning bit that grabs an unclamped workpiece is also the main injury risk in this whole operation.
• Sacrificial, and replaced when it gets ragged. A backer with a hole already in it near your new hole is not supporting anything. Shift it or flip it.

A scrap of 1/2 in plywood a foot square, kept on the bench for this purpose, is one of the highest-value shop appliances you will ever not build. Rigid foam insulation works too and is kinder to bit edges, which is why many people keep a 2 in sheet of it for both drilling and cutting sheet goods.

When you cannot back it up: drill from both faces

Sometimes the piece is already assembled, or both faces show. The technique is to make both visible faces entry faces.

Drill from the show face until the very tip of the bit breaks through the back — just the point, a pinhole you can feel more than see. Stop. Flip the board, locate that pinhole, and finish the hole from the second side. Each face gets the clean cutting action and neither gets the unsupported exit. On a drill press, set the depth stop so you cannot overshoot; by hand, wrap a piece of tape around the bit as a depth marker and go slowly.

This works best with a brad point or Forstner because both leave a recognisable center mark to locate from the other side. With a twist bit the pinhole wanders, which is one more reason the geometry matters.

Speed, feed and the last three millimeters

Two mistakes do most of the remaining damage, and both are about the operator rather than the tool.

Too much speed on a big bit. A large-diameter bit has a high rim speed even at modest rpm, and the heat burnishes and burns rather than cuts. Large Forstner and spade bits want low rpm with firm, steady feed. If the hole is smoking or the shaving is dark, the speed is wrong.

Too much pressure at the end.This is the single most common cause of blowout. You lean in to get through, and the remaining fibers — now a paper-thin disc — simply let go. Deliberately reduce pressure for the last few millimeters and let the bit cut its way out.

Clearing chips matters on anything deeper than about three bit diameters: withdraw the bit, let the flutes clear, go back in. Packed chips generate heat, and heat is what turns a clean hole into a scorched one.

What to look for in the bits that fix this

Before the picks, what actually matters when you are buying for hole quality rather than for hole quantity:

• A center spur or a center point. This is what stops the bit skating and what lets you drill from both faces. Any wood bit without one is a metal bit with a wood label.
• Outer spurs that stand proud of the cutting lips.They have to reach the wood first. This is visible on the bit — look at the tip from the side.
• Sizes matched to real jobs. Shelf pins, dowels, screw clearance. A set that misses the size you need weekly will be replaced by one that does not.
• A depth collar, for countersinks. Setting the countersink depth once for a whole batch of screws is the difference between heads that all sit flush and a row of inconsistent dimples.
• Honest material claims. A bit marketed for wood, metal, tile and masonry at once is optimized for none of them.

The three bits that solve this

Nothing exotic, and all three are inexpensive. The ranked buying page, with cons on every pick, is best drill bits for woodworking.

Tool	Why you need it	Price
DeWalt DW1720 Brad Point Drill Bit Set, 6-Piece	The fix for entry-face tear-out and the default bit for any hole in wood. The center spur holds your mark and the outer spurs cut the rim before the flutes can lift it.	$12.98
Comoware 16-Piece Forstner Bit Set	The cleanest hole available in a drill, and the only option for a flat bottom - shelf pins, hinge cups, dowel sockets, plugs. Run it slow with steady pressure.	$47.99
FTG USA 5-Piece Tapered Countersink Drill Bit Set (#4 #6 #8 #10 #12)	The fix for splitting rather than splintering. Pilot, clearance hole and countersink in one plunge, sized by screw gauge, with a collar that sets the depth once for a whole batch.	$17.90
Starter kit subtotal		$78.87

Live Amazon prices as of October 21, 2026; they change, and we don’t display stale numbers — a tool with no live price shows “Check price” and is left out of the subtotal. #ad How we’re funded.

Splitting is a screw problem, not a drill problem

If the crack runs with the grain and appeared when you drove a fastener, no drilling technique will help — the fix is upstream. A wood screw is a wedge, and it has to displace material equal to its own shank. Near the end of a board there is not enough wood to absorb that, so it splits along the path of least resistance.

The Forest Products Laboratory’s Wood Handbook chapter on fastenings is the standard reference, and the practical version is three numbers: a pilot hole at roughly 70% of root diameter in softwood, roughly 90% in hardwood, and a clearance hole at full shank diameter through the top board so the screw pulls the pieces together instead of jacking them apart. Measure root diameter between the threads, not across them.

Two habits on top of that: keep fasteners a few screw diameters back from the end of a board where you can, and drill the pilot deeper than the screw is long in dense hardwood. If one has already split, the repair options are in how to fill gaps in wood joints and how to remove a stripped screw.

Special cases worth knowing

Veneered plywood and melamine

The face layer is thin, hard and unsupported, so it chips rather than tears. Score the circumference with a marking knife before drilling, or let the bit’s spurs cut a ring at very low speed and only then drill properly. Masking tape over the location helps a little. Back the exit face as always.

End grain

Drilling into end grain splits far more readily than drilling across the face, because you are driving between the fibers rather than through them. Oversize the pilot slightly, go slower, and if the hole is for a fastener consider whether the joint should be carrying load in end grain at all — joinery vs fastening covers that trade-off.

Thin stock

Under about 1/4 in there is barely any material to support the rim, so use the smallest adequate bit, back it tightly, and step up in two passes if the hole is large relative to the thickness.

Hardwood

Dense species tear less and burn more. Drop the speed, keep the bit moving, and clear chips often. Which species behave which way is in wood species for beginners.

The safety part, briefly

Clamping the work is not only an accuracy measure. An unclamped workpiece that a bit grabs becomes a spinning object at hand height, and that is the realistic injury in drilling — far more likely than anything involving the bit itself. OSHA’s portable powered tool standard and its eye protection requirement cover the general principles; in a home shop the practical version is clamp the work, wear ANSI-rated glasses, and keep sleeves and anything hanging well clear of a rotating chuck. The gear is in best safety gear for woodworking.