Originally Posted by
southpawboston
okay, now i'm f***ed. joejack was right on the money. i went ahead and bought a bolt extracter. i drilled a perfectly centered hole in the broken stainless steel bolt, got the extracter in, applied some torque (much less than was required to break off the original bolt), and it snapped!!! and now it's worse, when i try to drill the extracter out, it's just too hard. my bits can't handle it. i am going to have to bring the fork to a frameshop and have them drill it out. damn. and i was so close. if i had chosen the alternative method (joejack's method: drill a sequentially larger hole) i could have gotten this bugger out, easily. now i have to pay someone else to do it.
A small grinding bit used with a Dremel tool will eventually remove the remains of the screw extractor. To machine it out. only a solid carbide end mill will cut that hardened extractor. At least your fork is easily set up on a milling machine if it comes to that. Actually, you might try drilling through the opposite side of the screw then knocking the broken extractor out with a punch.
Whatever you do, don't try another extractor in the screw after you get the first one out, not that someone here has ever done something THAT stupid
