Drill bits

I use Sutton drills, but as they're Australian-made you probably won't find them in the UK. My recommendation would be to just go for plain black HSS drills, in the best quality you can find. Don't bother with any fancy coatings, they don't last all that long and are a waste of money in my opinion. Just buy good plain HSS drills and replace as necessary.

I use bog standard dormer jobber bits for most things, but I do have a proper sharpener to keep them keen. I would avoid buying a set (unless on some offer that makes them cheaper) and just buy the ones you want, as most sets start at 1mm and go up in 0.5mm increments you end up not really using the first 4 bits of any set you buy. I've not used the TiN ones much (as my dads work don't use them ) but they are good and look all pretty and goldeny

For spot welds i've got a few dormer HSCo spot weld drills, they are awesome. But quite pricey at around £15-20 each. They are designed for boron steel so drilling through "old tat" is no bother for them IME

yeah, generally dormer here too, i tend to buy handfulls of old ones dirt cheap off the car boot and resharpen em, as you know they're the older better quality ones then.

the ti coated bosch ones, or even the silver uncoated ones they do are very good as well.

to be honest though, even the cheap heller ones machine mart sell seem to be pretty good, ive bought a few larger ones (12mm+) for one off jobs cos they cost so little, they're all under a fiver each, and ive only ever had to resharpen one, and i was giving it some serious abouse.

I bought a full set of numbered drills a few years ago from RDG tools, yes they are funny sizes (Not imperial or metric) but there is always one the right size or within a whisker of the right size.

Learn to sharpen them properly and even nasty cheap ones can be made to work a bit, they jsut need resharpening regularly.

Spent a boring half hour in preston post office waiting for something tedious and watched a guy drilling the lock on the cash point (I assume it was legit....!) he'd run the drill for 5-10 secs pushing really hard, change it out for another bit, resharpen another bit in a few strokes on a little grinder and drill again, over and over again. Looked like a long job! But he'd resharpen the drill in 2-5 secs.

Is sharpening older bits, good quality ones, something that an amateur could have a go at?
Is it as simple as it sounds?

I use cheap drills in my pillar drill. Slow speed, and some lube and they work well. I re-sharpen as required, but find that as long as you employ good drill technique, even the cheap ones work well.

In a hand held battery or mains drill, however, I seem to blunt them in moments. Too fast and not enough pressure.