How to Remove a Drill Bit Stuck in the Wall

The very idea of doing some home improvement tasks on your own can be both exciting and a bit frightening. Truth be told, those are usually the things that are the most rewarding in life. If you find yourself both excited and a bit scared, it’s usually a good indication that it’s something you should go ahead and do. After all, you don’t really grow if you don’t do something that scares you a little bit from time to time. That’s because doing the things that scare you forces you to get outside of your comfort zone and focus on things that you don’t necessarily know how to do. They can be something as simple as drilling a few holes in the wall in order to do some much needed home improvements. Perhaps you’re finally getting around to putting that painting up on the wall that you’ve been wanting to hang for so long or maybe you’re installing a self-contained lighting fixture. Whatever the case might be, the best thing you can do is forge ahead, even if you feel a bit of trepidation at the idea of doing so. The question is, what will you do if something goes wrong? Say that a drill bit gets stuck in the wall. How exactly does one remove a drill bit from their wall without causing a lot of additional damage? Fortunately, it’s not as difficult as it sounds.

Have These Items on Hand

While you should never allow fear to stop you from doing something you want to do, it is always a good idea to educate yourself as much as possible so that you don’t go into something completely blind. After all, you are going into the project with the intention of succeeding, not making a colossal mess of things. Educating yourself means having a few basic items on hand just in case something unexpected happens. In this particular case, you need to have a few tools on hand before you begin. That way, you’re not scrambling to find them or wasting time running all over town in an attempt to obtain them when you could be at the house correcting the problem. Fortunately, you don’t need a lot of things and you probably already have the overwhelming majority of these items on hand to begin with. For example, you probably already have vice grips, a crescent wrench and maybe even a ball-peen hammer. If you don’t, you’ll need to obtain these items before you get started, along with nuts, washers and yes, a wire welder. Don’t let that last one scare you. This isn’t as hard as you’re probably thinking it’s going to be. In fact, you probably won’t even need to use these items because as long as you educate yourself about the process and you work efficiently but thoroughly, you probably won’t have any issues with a drill bit getting stuck in the wall to begin with. That said, it is always better to be safe than sorry. Being prepared doesn’t mean that you expect something to go wrong, only that you’re ready to handle the situation if it does.

Removing the Drill Bit

It’s also worth noting that in most cases, removing a drill bit that is stuck doesn’t require a lot of the items that were mentioned in the above paragraph. These items are for one that is genuinely stuck and really doesn’t want to come out. More often than not, the process of removing a stuck drill bit from a wall is much more simple. In fact, you can often do so with nothing more than a pair of needle-nose pliers. In most cases, you can simply grab the part of the drill bit that is still protruding from the wall with a pair of needle-nose pliers and pull it out. If you can’t get a good grip on the drill bit, use the vise grips in order to do the same thing. In some cases, you’ll be able to pull the drill bit directly out of the wall with only a little bit of force. If that proves to be problematic, then you can use a pair of pliers to turn the drill bit counterclockwise in order to loosen it up some, maintaining some steady back pressure on it throughout the process. This will allow you to gently remove it from the wall as soon as it becomes free enough that you can do so. As previously mentioned, this is enough to get the job done more often than not. If things prove to get more difficult, then you can utilize all of the tools that were mentioned in one of the earlier paragraphs to try and pry it out of the wall. Before you get too frustrated with that prospect, there is one more option that you might want to try first.

Removing a Drill Bit With a Drill

Have you ever thought about trying to remove the stuck drill bit with a drill? As opposed to trying to pull it out of the wall, you might be able to simply attach another drill bit to your drill and push it through the other side of the wall. As a matter of fact, it’s often a lot easier to do things this way than it is to wear yourself out (not to mention tearing your hair out) trying to either pull the drill bit out of the wall or slowly back it out of the wall by turning it counterclockwise. In reality, it depends on how thoroughly stuck the drill bit really is. If it made it the majority of the way through the wall before getting stuck, it will probably take you a lot less time to push it through the wall with another drill bit and an automatic drill than it will to use pliers and vise grips to try to work it all the way back out. On the other hand, it wouldn’t really make sense to use this method if it only got a few centimeters in before getting stuck. The important thing to remember is that this type of thing can happen to anyone. If it does happen to you, simply remove the drill bit and then carry on with your project. There’s no reason to allow a setback like this to stop you from accomplishing what you set out to do. Instead, think of it as an opportunity to learn how to do something new and carry on from there.