Fred, you know I am no expert by any means and all my pens at this point are from wood. I have tried all the bits I could find- brad point, bullet tip, the vortex twist, regular twist bits, split point bits, etc. I finally pretty well settled on brad point bits. They seem to do the best job overall. I also learned the hard way, to drill real slow. I use my drill press with a woodworking clamp holding the blank flat on my drill press table. I cannot sharpen the brad point bits very well but they are cheap enough and I get enough blanks out of one bit that it is pretty negligible.