1935 South Bend Heavy 9x48 |
Holding a golf ball for drilling is pretty difficult with common tools. The ball wants to pop out of clamps and vises. One quick and dirty solution is to drill a hole smaller than the diameter of the ball in a board and hold the ball in place using the board and your foot.
You can also build a small box to easily hold a ball for drilling at the bench vise or drill press using this concept. If you are able to hit the center of the portion of the ball exposed by the hole you will get a decent hole.
But if you want a perfectly balanced ball, you want a dead center hole. And the easiest way to drill a dead center hole is hold the ball in a three jaw chuck in a lathe. I cranked down pretty tightly on the chuck and the ball still wanted to pull out of the jaws unless the lathe was in reverse when withdrawing the drill bit. There just isn't very much contact surface.
Be sure to get solid core balls for safety, liquid core balls can eject liquid under high pressure.