Drill Powered Bathroom Brush

Hello,

In this Instructable you will learn how to decrease the amount of time it will take you to do some awful housework and get back to whats important, watching football. I made a brush that attaches pretty easily to my drill a while ago and a few of my friends liked the idea so, while making a new one, I decided to take some pictures so I could help other guys and girls get out of doing some tedious housework. Unless you are a Cowboys fan.. or an Eagles fan. Than you probably want to just take your time cleaning so that you can pretend your team is good.

NOTE: You may find yourself enjoying cleaning the bathroom more when you are spinning a brush at 25,000 RPM.

Also it should go without saying, but do not have the water in the sink, shower, bathtub or anything running while you are using an ELECTRIC POWER DRILL. You will learn that I am not liable and natural selection is a very real thing.

That being said, let's begin.

I picked all of the fastening components and the brush from Walmart for under $10. You can feel free to improvise on any of the steps or components.

What I used was some 1/4" bolts that are 1" long along with the included nuts (Don't use over 1")

Flat and lock (split) washers

Drill bits (Just need one that is the same diameter as the bolt)

Drill

Some pliers, a hammer, baseball bat... doesn't matter. Just something to break the top off of the brush with.

Then you need some type method to be able to drive a bolt head with a drill. The last picture is two of the options that I have used.

The calipers aren't needed, I just had them around and used them to show some dimensions.

For this step you will need some pliers, a hammer or some method to break to clear plastic off of the brush. I would recommend wearing some eye protection for this step since the plastic tends to fly around some and you don't want to get hit in the eye.

Try to break off all of the clear plastic since it can be sharp and could possibly cut you while the drill is spinning it extremely fast and close to your hand... common sense again, but have to say it.

As you can see from the pictures in this section, the pack of bolts that I had on hand have too big of a diameter to be able to fit in the hole that is already in the middle of the brush. So grab a drill bit that is the same diameter as the bolt, 1/4" in this case, and widen the hole.

Only two things are really important with this step. The first is to pick a bolt that has a diameter which is not any smaller than the hole of the brush. The second is to try and keep the hole in the absolute center of the brush as best you can. If the bolt is too small or the hole is not centered than the axis of rotation will not be lined up with the center of mass of the brush and you will have a lot of vibration. You will also probably fling the brush in a random direction when you start trying to spin it with the drill.

This step is pretty simple. The order is Bolt - Lock Washer - Flat Washer - Brush - Flat Washer - Lock Washer - Nut

Only thing that is important on this step and when you are using the brush is that you either use a bolt that is 1" long or you use a Dremel or some type of cutting wheel to shorten the bolt. It is also important that when using the brush you only press down enough to to clean the surface. It is not necessary to throw your weight into the drill or go all Hulk on it. If you do, then you will be compressing the brushes and dragging the spinning tip of the bolt across the wall of your shower. I haven't done that, but I'm going to take an educated guess and say that it won't turn out to well.

This is to just show that it works. I am just showing it on a workbench since I am going to guess that people don't want to see it cleaning hard water marks off of my shower wall.

Let me know if you have any questions and enjoy speeding up your cleaning so that you can get back to watching football. Unless you are a Dallas Cowboys fan... in that case than you would probably rather be cleaning the bathroom than watching Romo "try" and play football.