Well, I dont have a picture of the ensuing mayhem. The first 3 holes I drilled were no problem, smooth and easy. On the fourth hole I either hit a knot with the pilot bit in the wood below, or I let the drill wander out of a perpindicular plane to the acrylic, or who the heck knows what happened. Needless to say a drill with a 1/2" chuck is a pretty powerful drill. The hole saw bound in the acrylic, and the drill whipped right out of my hands. It hurt. I picked up the drill a few feet away, it still worked..so no harm no foul. Back to drilling. Well, I have a MISTAKE #2, and a LEARNING POINT all rolled into one. If I had this to do over, I would try to find someone with a drill press to do multiple holes like this, I also would have checked the pilot bit to ensure it was still true (straight). I went back to drilling the holes, and from this point on it was NOT easy. Every 10 seconds the saw would bind and almost rip the drill out of my hands. I was ready and had it braced well. I noticed the holes themselves were now somewhat enlarged at the edges when being drilled, and the drill wanted to wobble badly. Well I finished the culprit hole, and went on to the final three holes to drill. Multiple incidents of binding, and drills flying etc...I ended up with this:
Nice huh? As you can see that is the bottom part of my nice divider, or at least a fragment of the bottom part. I ended up with 2 of these "fragments" before I was done. The nice thing about acrylic is it is pretty forgiving, and it breaks like a jigsaw puzzle...I just finished my horrible drilling and then glued the pieces back together with solvent...amazingly it worked well...though its not pretty, and there are quite a few chips on the hole edges. Once again I was lucky. The bad looking holes were all in the middle of the divider, so they will be hidden by the water when the sump is working. In the end you will see it doesn't look that bad. Anyway, After I finished, I took apart the hole saw, and found out I had bent the pilot drill bit. GREAT! (Note to self: Freehand drilling precision holes is a BAD idea). Here you see the piece that was shattered and the culprit bent drill bit.
And here you can see the reconstruction! Not bad if I do say so myself! You can see some of the chipped edges in the middle though...I was tempted to photoshop them out(just kidding).
